you took me to your house last
night and held my mother’s hurt in
your arms made me whole again.
again i feel a sun of
an opportunity i haven’t felt since
the last time you

took me ice skating when i was five.
the snow has always felt like
entrapment to me
a boots on the ground
brawl to get above water.
as we slide on the
ice it threatens to crack beneath me and
break me by the leg that has fallen into the
thunder-rolling
ocean beneath.

but you tell a story of the time
you counted the slivers of white on the ice here,
the trembling pulse of a child’s whisper in the air
whistling through the trees.
and you dance with me without being careful
i’ve never felt so free

one day after your work decided to industrialize the father in you to death
and you decided i had died to you
and the feeling of the sun on my heart deferred
to a space on my forehead that my veins pulse out of
that next day i felt emptiness for the first time.
the ice underneath me broke me into an
avalanche of rumbling teardrops that shattered glass
and ice and
lasted for four long days.
the adult birthed in me breathed
and grew outside of my child body
and the little kid in me just watched until
her silence strangled her to
death?

today i know she’s living
child whisper whistling through my lungs and
learning how to dance in the day time
nurse the grown up to sleep
and take my space for her own
take my space for my own

for the first time today i played outside
found a frozen pond instead of that ice rink
and laid to face the sky,
fearless in the face of the wholy sun
but knowing that i am just as whole
-jmm