I come back to my mother like the hand 
of a clock moves back to 12. Every hour just
a means of traveling toward her. My mother
rules every century I live in, I press her name
into a glass, and each letter meets the plush of 
my fingertips. In this way only, she never left me. 
I lay claim to her by speaking her name. 
I wasn’t in need of sorrow, but it came. 

⥁

I wasn’t in need of sorrow, but it came. Heavy as  
a moonless night, my brow furrowed under dark.
She could be dead, she could be eons away. I could 
be 18, could be 32. It didn’t matter, I traveled. 
My heart slowed, my hands shook like butterflies. 
They tell you your mother’s name then expect you
not to wonder. I wandered in the night until I came
to her door, I was always walking toward her door. 

⥁

I was always walking toward her door. 
Devotion the seed that sprouts in me, comes
vivid green. You can take and take and take from
the garden, but what happens when the soil grows
fangs, bites back? To bite as in to make a toothy meal
of the hand, bite like a measure of space. The space 
she made within me has grown incisors. Fanged, it strikes.
Because blood is the answer to everything, blood answers.