Poem in Red:

 

My heart beats in my daughter’s chest.

There is a key to unlock it 

but I lost it some time ago

and when I start to look for it

I notice the dishes

haven’t been washed.

 

My daughter is strong.

The yellow of my flesh under her fingernails

Her enemy is my release, and so she digs in,

tearing off my layers of self

   I stand here,

bleeding, open, wounded.

The blurry line between she and me

melting into invisibility.

 

Sometimes I think I will take this body 

on a greasy night bus heading south.

That I will sit in the musty seats of escape

high on desperation, and amazed 

by the sight and sound of myself.

 

But how can I leave without my heart?

 

My daughter is strong. 

Like a tornado she holds me in suspension,

and I wait to touch down.

My flesh under her nails, my heart in her chest.

 

And I wonder if I made my own mother bleed.