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Daughter Suite

Landscape Toward a Proper Silence

Heart drawn over
heart beat—still

ink-perfect and
three days old. Corridors

within corridors she sleeps
away from me, in the dark, keeping

her knotted end. My mother's bargain struck

in ignorance or worse—
love, birth turned us

inside out, leaf pushed through
veined leaf opening where a way

was cut. Later I saw
her as if through water's broken

surface we fell, face to face in
cold startle, that one instant of

splitting apart forever lodged
between us like my mother

saying, "Speak up," meaning speak
for me, meaning the word

milk, not milk she gave
brushing my hair

back as if into her own braid and me crying

out with the tangle. At night
the unspoken nightmare

pulling us back into her
bed, "Don't move," she'd whisper

nightgown's soft breath
between us. This August

light beneath the door, behind the
curtain, dissembling. I kept

counting every finger, toe.
She could be anything
but mine.