Baby called me Rusalka,
having the same number of syllables as my name.

Moonlight tossed me in a river to awake
fins from my toenails
to bird-sing to the handsome until I am unalone

mortality, mortality
as clean as the banks of a landfill.

Our child would nap in a basket of ripe fruit
strung to a willow and birch

description of me, “perpetually wet from something”
or alexandrite
golden by dusk though with a jade sunburn;

hair so long
would *** a rainforest’s feet if it had a pair.

Suicide on the tip of one’s tongue
now saltwater buoyant on the roof of a mouth
I was out of wedlock,

mother anchored my wrists with tangly fieldroots
right below our old tire swing

and

Baby simply meant I touch
everyone with my laugh, and it makes them dead.