my hands folded
as if they are to scoop
and placed onto
each other, my
face is upstairs with my grandmother
eight butterflies in pastel;
we have been here forever


I wonder what it's like
to have quiet skin
to live next to a house
and hang on the clothesline
underwear, off-white,
with stretched elastic
and the ghost of a pair of legs


I was mummified as a child
my parts strung up,
tiny organs.
they dropped into jars like pebbles.
imagine my kneecaps
skipping across a river;
from the shore,
my doctor counts,
one, two, three.
the paramedics wade waist-deep
to retrieve my liver.
I was afraid I couldn't swallow
as a child,
my tongue netted like a fish
after a journey from
river to sea.