Two Daughters
When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them. They would carry on as if changing the locks was a game all parents played with their oldest child, to trick them into resiliency. They let my little sister have my bedroom one day while I was at school, to make room for the new baby that was on the way. “This house is only big enough for two daughters,” my father told me with a shrug. At night I would sneak in and hide under my old bed, and when my parents would come to tuck my sister in for the night, I’d mouth along the words as they read her my favorite bedtime story. My father tells everyone he has two daughters, their names are Pride and Joy. Occasionally I’ll bump into him in the supermarket, both of us perusing the citrus aisle, and though he can’t remember me, his eyes will linger on my face just long enough to make us both uncomfortable.
Saint Elizabeth’s
My body is an ever-changing clock—
spastic springs and gears never settling,
never keeping proper time.
Bodies carry bodies in pockets, on chains
like skin-scented heirlooms. When my grandmother
died, she left me her first kiss, the ticking sound
of summer asphalt and peach fuzzed legs.
I see my mother’s handwriting on the chart beside
my bed: Sarita has always been a dramatic child.
Her face gathers humidity like tears trapped behind glass.
Dr. Winnicki advises me to rest, but never to fall asleep,
while he looks for cures in different time zones.
His clock is all bent and rusty snow, melting into
creeks where salmon spawn alcoholic fishermen.
Clocks line up on barstools in Wuuhstah,
“Ayuh yoos, haws abouwda beeah?”
Nicotine-stained vowels, romancing beers like wives.
Before becoming wives, girls sway to the music,
twirl their skirts like love. Their pink and red fingernails
tap out the seconds between handsome wristbands.
Tell me what you’re really thinking…I don’t want to know.
Nurse Alma sees too many words in my future, where she says
nuts chase the squirrels, and clocks are ever-changing bodies.
