In the knuckle-white walls
of a museum in Chicago
I behold oil on canvas and say
She speaks to me,
half-smiling. My mother sucks air
through her teeth,
says, unblinking,
She has an eating disorder.
I’m left shaky, gulping air
that’s known a thousand other lungs
before mine, oxygenated the minds
of those searching
for the things they cannot name
in blues and pinks and blinding light.
I try to find meaning
in morning embodied
in a ninety pound nymph.
She rises from a sea
like the backs of wisteria petals
which I once scratched with my thumb
to smell earth’s sweet breath
when I was still a stranger
to my bones.
As promised she reminds me
of truth. Truth is a ribcage,
the knots of a spine.
It is lying to my mother
in a doctor’s office.
It is undressing before the mirror
and holding my arms out,
wrists bent as though the sky
rests on my palms.
I want to hold the sky
but my mother looks at me and says
I’m not strong.
Says I’m too frail
for winter in the city.
She wants to keep me
in the day in the sun
of her tangling arms.
Mama, if the painted lady
with her willow limbs
and tangling hair can birth
each day from her wiry womb
I can leave you. I can leave
my mind when it leaves my body
to wither like gold marsh.
I will find a mother
in the shadow
who will braid my hair
and feed me truth till I am whole.
Don’t you see how she stands
rooted as the oak
beneath which you sang
me lullabies? Don’t you see
how she knows her place,
her sinew and skin
unyielding, aglow?