we are your daughters too! we are your daughters, have you forgotten that part? have you been gone so long that your memories have shriveled into space gaps and brain tissue and eggnog?

young stud, blue jeans. there’s a sister in the room, you don't have to worry about being dizzy anymore. is there comfort in her hair. is there a mosquito green pond in her eyes. or is it just me?

some meadows are full of honey, like the one in san francisco above the trolley lines. maybe it was there that they walked barefoot, full of moon wedges. maybe it was there that the gravitational pull of the earth first began to melt.

we are exactly the same! closer than twins! womb-slick and half-closed, hands grasped together from the moment the first cells began to split. mitochondria. fibula. ozone.

i wanna hold your hand sometimes! i’ve been thinking of monserrat lately, her knee-high black converse shoes and her tulle skirt. i have been thinking of sitting behind the science building and tearing my history textbooks into strips and i have been thinking of the alley behind the safeway and how i pretended i was luxa for a few hours. all of that ends at graduation with elan’s red dress and her mom in pajamas.

i still wanna hold your hand, i am fifteen and dumb and you are seventeen and beautiful. the inside of her stomach was so long ago, it’s the difference between the beginning of a century and two years after it has begun.

maybe we aren’t so alike but i know that i still dream of water bugs and swamp gods. does your heart beat to pacific tides? does it float and gasp, like duck and pelican? because the ocean is still ready for us. it is gooey with patience and whirlpools and spongey with squid ink, squid eggs and krill.

the east coast is waiting for you too, ready to fold you into its hilly green arms and take you away. some places are too pretty for their own good, they are too much lighthouse red gas station not-oregon hot dizzy head sit down warm cement. i don’t want you to go. and i still don’t even know where you want to go to college, but probably not san diego because someone said she wanted to play there and you didn’t chime in.

it’s so funny about being postnatal. blue and orange hands, umbilical cords in place of functioning intestines, young toothless mouths and cottage cheese. sometimes i miss it. that’s dumb because i am still postnatal, i am still conductive to electricity my body is still blue and wrinkled. we are exactly the same, don’t ever forget that. don’t forget we shared a body.