We are pinpricks of light, flickering side by side,

strung,

bound together in the great hollow space between words and womb

I wait for it to speak and watch

while golden honey drowns daydreamed maps scrawled across my desk.

Feathers

stuffed under its skin and black button eyes

a doll with heart beating

tiny white teeth,

barbed wire cries savage as any warrior’s.

Knowing what to call it is a challenge

this precious parasite

beloved beast with a poison touch.

Torn from my fabric.

Beautiful bullet-holes in this body

are the sweet scars it bestows in its cold, weeping way

song is caught in a throat that is not mine.

Much like a ghost, an echo,

its shadow looms on the moon outside my window.

Its cradle carved from flesh,

but I have none to feed it.

The hands that creep over its edge are unwelcome enemies

to my childhood’s fresh sentry,

swallowing my tongue.

The wound from which I cannot recover holds me tight and calls me mother.