these days, i try not to write about division

how many more years than an abacus

the splitting goes

how the oldest sound is

hollow

how moving beads crack

together then apart

how i exist

marking years in deaths

in severance

you don't have to tell me

division is just a pretty word

for wound

we made this wound

you don't have to

tell me

how the oldest sound is

breaking

there, i said it.

meeting you wasn't sweet

as blooming butterflies

flapping from my wrinkled husk

it was gunky cocoon of grub

bulging my belly despite brining

in bleach and gulping the bathwater

it was maggots latching to porky

innards and the doom of hatching

no matter how much i retched

meeting you was instant

parasitic itch of pickled infants

molting my youth with an oh

shit

this guy's gonna

make me

fly

and little one, the world you hold

won't remain so fantasy pure

as twigs and strings and dizzy birds.

those sparrow tunes turn sorrowful in time,

those crows take on a beauty blue

and the in-betweens of lovely and wrong

grow difficult to decipher, as you may too.

but in this moment your auburn locks

nest right atop your sing-song head

which will fill with sticks and stones and silly words.

and little one, the world you behold is brittle,

so hold it gently.

"You rarely find a loon alone."

I wonder if you were concerned,

casting out the words I'd known

for years. Downhill the water ferned

its fingers round the only stone

thrown out by you back when I learned

you rarely find a loon alone.

I wonder if you were concerned

that day I came to you, all grown.

You, in your way, forgot years earned

and lost, left the stone unturned

and looked at me as if I'd flown.

You rarely find a loon alone.

Remember mother forcing

those orange dresses

down over our halo hair

looking at us through the mirror

Remember rehearsing curtsies

spinning dances, simple hymns

chirrups of cardinals and hounds

singing in the night

Remember mother calling us

by the wrong names

sending us to separate rooms

when we corrected her

if you must break our Pangaea

spare me from the slow drag

plunge me in your trenches

make mountains

on my back

i stitched myself

into your skin

so tightly

i needed the severance

of a border

to pull

our seams

apart

when will your gunsmoke

leave my hands to cool

when will your dust storm

storm less

stop

when will your burrs

tumble from my hair

rip away tangles

if need be

rip away skin

you keep the wind chimes

so I might shake them

from a distance–

memories like wheat,

a swaying sea.