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Of All the Metaphors for Being a Daughter


I’m drawn to the strangler fig’s

cosmic swirl of execution, aerial


trapeze artist mining down through

the body. And who am I to pretend


I have any stake in that death:

dissolving nutrients, nonconsensual


sacrifice, melted trunk a banquet

while the whole canopy looks on,


quiet in growth. The silent dissolution,

and after, nothing but soil made richer


for the disappearance. Reader,

which one daughter, which one


mother? Repeat after the YouTube

subtitles: hemi-parasitic, which is to say


split / reliance, which is to say keystone

species, more abundance than murder,


at the end of the day. All I know

is that forest must be rammed


with oxygen and rot. And look,

a few burgeoning fruit that will soon


house another death, only this one

volunteered: a mother digs herself


into that sweet, wet heart, all thrash

and surrender, wings stripped


from the muscular body. And so

two lives—no, a whole chattering


universe, stuffed with sugar.

These days, everyone’s dying


for a little more life. Yes, my kingdom—

though I could see her coming for miles,


long before I knew my body

had an endpoint, long before


I knew that finish line was a thin

tuft of seed, glossy, slick with bird shit,


anchoring herself into me,

where soon she’d wrap her legs,


fingers, every inch around

this one long, lichened self.


 

On Having a Daughter


Instead of any child, I’ll carry thistle

bulbs, purple and rubbing against—

or the seed of a banyan, quiet, sturdy,