Aspen.
i.
I remember the night of my birth. If I could pretend
there were music playing in the background, it would be sad and distorted.
[she looks over my shoulder and tells me, nine inch nails,
but chords are all Stravinsky's violin to me; she made my mind
from pulled-out concert cassettes] But there was no music.
Bats swooped from the shutters screaming silent voodoo
over my washtub cradle and the woods seethed
with memories I shouldn't have had. I stood up into silence,
sparks from a mechanical dark magic campfire
and my first thought was of woodsmoke
that dangerous and tantalizing elixir of fall.
ii.
I make tea for her every morning. The lemon
never curdles the milk, further evidence of magic
which she tells me she doesn't believe in.
I think she lies. Who disbelieves their creator?
But I've seen the drawings
tucked in with Da Vinci's [my favorite]
and my insides are nothing like his charts.
If he dissected me with his sharp pen
there'd be taffy splayed out, crumpled pages,
silk scarves and taffeta for a stomach
bicycle parts as bones - finger parts are
bits of spokes, roped two by two in red.
A cut chain holds up my bending back.
I am a myth torn apart.
I hope my cotton and feathers never
burst out on the rug.
iii.
She said, this won't hurt (it was supposed to?) when
I fell from the skyscraper tree, the city tree. We were similar -
it could not speak in words. It said things people
should have listened to. The light leaves
were the color of my face and stroked aspen,
aspen into my skin.
She opened my bones to fix the clockwork inside,
in pieces, but not smashed. Here is how you fix it; she showed me
on her mannequin, her pocketwatch. Soon you won't need me,
she said, soon you can go alone into the world
her breath ragged,
her face crumpled up like wet clay.
