Incontinently Adrift by Lana Bella
my mother says bleeding would divide
the body in two as she shouts from the
skyward deck, like her conviction could
stop the blood flow that ushers me into
its red-bone inertia--
from behind the heavy wooden door, she
stumbles out with an ocean of fear bathed
in kaleidoscopic halos, my mother's heels
click and clack across the cement floor
as her pale hands reach down cradling
my head, where a river of blood congeals
over old skin--
up the carbon sky, ash colored clouds veil
the sun with the weight of a thousand
cotton gauze, my eyes turn hazy sensing
napalm of light burst inside like pinwheels
turning, by which time my darkness has
taken roots and grown branches--
I drip red inside my mother's clumsy hands
then over the concrete earth, candy-coated
thoughts pull apart easily as if I am the wind
conveying molecules across the atmosphere--
