A Tongue For Loss

Which of the boys harbors a fat wound in his chest? What requiem 

are the birds of the sky pulling out 

of the throat of the sea, so much that I want to slip through it? In a tongue

that is not my own, I know how the world 

first ends; the silt in my bones spreading out like tamarind thorns

sings the idyll of loss. I have known 

this much loss, it reaches for my wrist with a name cloaked with ash.

It says: I have known you before you knew you.

Sometimes I wonder what I must give to the world to become one with 

it. The sun-stroked cabin of anxiety?

I have known the wilting body of my mother while she peeled the skin

of the afternoon’s game. When

my heart closed its fist, my body opened itself to a new road.  

This feeling tells me who to be and I still cannot

wipe clean yesterday’s fingers from the plate, spoons, and cups. I call

and everything turns human—loss

assumes a flesh and sits in the crook of my spine. My mother visits

me in a dream where antelopes

strut backwards above my head. My hands are this clasped

so that joy won’t escape me in that dream.

Open your hands to everything joyful—so I let the sun break through the pores

on the panes of the window.

I am afraid that if I get too comfortable in my skin, something will rise

from the angst. A burning homestead

and a girl with many empty homes. I will listen for the hoarse bicker 

of seashells under the pelting rain

hoping to find that which never settles inside me. Tonight, my silky pocket

could contain the whole sky. 

In the end, I am afraid of where the history will dislodge. I was bathed in

the mirror gaze of a country I didn’t love. 

I watched my tongue mispronounce irora, by which I mean pain. And irora,

which could mean the ache from that pain.

My ancestors have come again—in the yellow of the morning. In the grey

of the night, to place at my feet

two birds sitting headless. What should I do? Where do I roll this sleeve of 

numbness? These losses 

I have been hoarding relentlessly, what tongue do I mirror them with?