My Neck
I ask my PT
how does it feel
to hold my skull
with its brain inside
his hands touching thoughts
hidden and otherwise.
My mother used to tell me,
“you hold the whole truth
within because you never said any.”
She repeated it when I was six,
twelve, sixteen, jokingly sometimes.
My neck is what worries me
holding in its attic the weight
of all those forbidden images
of sexual encounters, robberies
from books written by others,
my hair, which used to be dark,
and a face exactly like my aunt Carmen,
matching a long line of Carmens
in my family, all the proud owners
of long necks topped by pretty faces.
Our cervical vertebrates out of sink
is something new.
Inheritance
Hair dark
like hers,
still didn’t
resemble my mother
nose, chin, small frame
belong to my father’s side,
shape, a miniature of her tall self,
legs shorter on the torso-legs ratio,
skin tone between ying and yang
neither
her golden nor his translucent type.
But
today I saw your image reflected in
the mirror
my smile a watercolor copy of yours,
through open lips a duller but
identical ivory,
then you made a gesture so familiar
I couldn’t tell who it belonged to,
ours no doubt,
I milked you for food, combed you for
meaning,
fought you for strength, mined you for
wisdom.
Your embracing self-encircling
my childhood, my paperless
inheritance.
Previously Published in Spectrum Poems
for Mothers, Special Edition, 2019
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