unspooled sun threaded
between breaths taken
to say 
your name

a glass spear, I shatter
craving loss, I surrender 
I give way to the truth of you


I disappear.


a vial of thick river 
dances in my throat
the pattern of life
explodes in my eye, my eye
in your hands your hands
two maps
of the face of my pain.
The phlebotomist is a god,
always bringing news of me.
In the place of my name
she writes
MOTHERBLOOD

see me!
by the bloody light of devotion
swim serrated slits
of a stained- glass eye 
held open by my lover’s look his touch his promise.
I
am a shower of color
a thrill of shape
rushing down his leg 
spilling me everywhere
spilling me everywhere

in the end l survive
what remains of you 
in me
waiting for rescue 

but the sounds of you 

rolling yellow
bottomless red the
bluest grave
ghost pink 
of asphyxiated coral black roads
of an EKG 
sketching the pace of your presence  
the sounds of you become the voice of my will.
I paint my tears orange
now ominous and citric
they dissolve the iron seal between us.

marbling body your 
bones we 
built them bathe me
in forensic light
study my secrets 
the mouth behind my mouth 
hungry hungry hungry 
I watch her 

this painter from Benin
who sits like a lonely cloud
translucent to me 
this painter from Benin who 
adorns faceless brides 
with the hangman’s okuku
royal and frail 
prayers for mercy 

out of these blossoming annihilations

         women disappeared in the spiral of descent

watercolors curl into an ornament of endings
but I don’t remember her name.

Before I give birth I 
choose a mirror and a veil 
a veil
from a Saturday market in Bologna
one euro
floral and fuchsia 
a summer scarf
a trinket among trinkets.
I am nothing but body like the night I made you. 

see the artist from Benin
see how she remains

I take my own photo
I am confident and unbroken 
a watercolor
        smearing life
                across a screen
I code my own disappearance
return as a drum of green sky
my own inversion
I am a new secret and
I will live by small answers this time 

live wire veins 
pump
      MOTHERBLOOD

across the 
incandescent steps of 
my daughter’s 
arrival

        we are 
        lakes of light 

I open and 
you are here