#not draw

“Criticism to Her Gossip”

A shame. My mother was a lonely woman. My mother called me an angel.

I could hear her humming watering her white-bred orchids behind the ivy wall.

My mother once raised me to believe that

Stars were stalls where the midnight souls sold their weary wares.

My mother

Was raised by a woman alone. She had ash and dust for a father 

Who blew plumes of starlint and smoke. 

Spotted geckos buried into 

her spine, crawling up and

Burrowing homes into the nape of her neck.

They would trip the light fantastic in the cavity of her chest,

Singing songs that were too throaty for the native tongue.

As a little girl I held the soft flesh of your speckled

Sagging beautiful skin 

in the angles of my palms

 I once thought that the look you managed to

reply with was an adumbrate to

maybe something beautiful

I find myself overusing that term with her.

In which my soft feet would fit right onto the branches of the lemon tree

And so I’d climb to pick the ripest flesh,          pores from the yellow rind 

Dotted with red ants. Me, my mother and hers would all squat scrubbing 

Course white salt into cabbage heads in beer crates, sipping rice wine in the

Evening right under the rattling fan. 

My mother smells of acetone and sweat, dotting her brow and upper lip,

Cuticles swollen and blistered from hours 

Clocked in.

My mother once pointed at the wine dark sky reminding, warning,

We would only be allowed to become brighter versions of ourselves once

We let truth into our greedy souls like the first breath of space, rushing into 

The previously lonely existence. 

My mother drunkenly mumbled into my ear, leaning against the lotto vending machine, asking me for my lucky numbers.

4, 7, 30. 

She threw her hair back and shook her head. My mother once told me I was her angel.

But I didn't have wings. So my mother said to bring her wood and a reason and she’d build me