My city floats.
In sweat from tired fingers that pull nails from islet porches,
sunken like the valley housed between two breasts,
we sit in the bottom of a bowl.
My city smells.
I stood with a paintbrush and hammer for seven years.
My mom taught me how to build back walls.
She showed me how to twist my wrist just right
so that the paint would go on evenly.
I did it too well, it was too clean.
The house looked like it had never been touched before.
My mom planted a magnolia tree in her placenta.
I watered it with our backyard hose
and kissed its trunk every morning.
In August it was gone completely,
leaving a crater in the dirt big enough for me to fit in.
My five year old body weak
from my mom holding me too tightly,
tighter than the roots could hold on to my backyard. We lived in silence
interrupted only by the sounds of hammers
and my mom singing to me
My girl, my girl, where will you go
I’m going the cold wind blows
In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine
I would shiver the whole night through