a contrapuntal

in the corner, mother
stitches eyes onto each scarf,
azure, bamboo, hazel.
rocking delicately,
her bones slipping
between the wooden slats.
the sun spreads like a pelt on the carpet.
she skins the light, efficient.
wears it as her own.
this is a survival chore.
she inverts headlights
and keeps scars as hostages.
her fabric grows on the years,
putting every zodiac to shame
and forgetting that
seven marriages and nameless children
embrace, tighter
than tassels pushing out
her daughters’ eyes and ears,
wool hollowing into love letters.
words into desire.
the radioactivity between had and has.
the light gutters, reminding her neighbors
how innumerable needles glisten.
history is an opaque mirror.

peels shadows from the wall and
christens each her daughter—
against the fissuring plaster she’s
at a thinning angle,
like starved fish through a net. she’s fallen
through the blinds. 
in this museum of silent bodies 
mother wears anything dead like a trophy. 
when her guilt stirs she tells herself: 
I have too many limbs and not enough memory.
into unbearable lenses backlit by grief, 
mother peers, refuses to blink. 
each cuckoo nest destroyed, 
for how light their futures weigh, 
only the stillborn survive. 
wrapped in bathtub curtains 
like a power line around a pine. brighter 
where teeth used to sprout. mother searches 
yet finds her own hands aged. 
backlit ghosts stretching 
desire into negative space after 
mother passes between rooms. 
she is alive. mother admires 
the forgotten and malignant. 
no moon can will her into rebirth.