Sunset
         Chelsea Dingman

 

 

 

 

                          Do you forget the roar
 

                                                                            of a tiny mouth unsettling

                        your sleep? How I was once a sparrow

lost in the yard? Or was it safer

                           for you to let him

             open new seams, your scars still

                                                      raw? I used to wake

and run all of the faucets

               as if we lived inside the falls. The house, lit

                                                                    like a constellation. Was I ever yours

              after that? There is such violence

                                          in the sunset. You wanted me

                           to beg, but I held my breath as I wanted

                                        to be held. I should have said I wanted sky

               to claim the stars. That I understood

                            to be a good girl I had to lie

               low, belly pressed to the floor. But, now, I’ve come back

                                                                     to stand in the circle of light

                            on the sun-porch. To admit the sunsets

               are drawn by my hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When My Mother and I Speak About the Weather
                                                               

She holds a knife
to the apple’s skin, green
and smooth. The veins

in her hands raise. I keep trying to
forget that she wants to open
my body like a constellation. To disassemble

the stars. She gestures with the tip
towards my neck, a slit of mirror. It catches
light from the windows. I want

to remind her that the light outside
can be anything she wants. But she can’t reach
the stars. And so. There is nothing else

to do, except open the sky’s chest
and let the stars fall
like seeds, like so much debris.