I.

I hope one day to say your toes 
barely came to the ground and every 
hand only held you aloft 
and each eye afforded you privacy 
but also your portion of gaze.
There is a small creek in you and I 
hope you’ll be carried along it,
guided by hands and looked after
by many eyes. 

II.

What footstep! What moon!
What musical instrument!
What wound! What rough moment 
I don’t know if you’ll survive!
(and the tools by which you survive:
Hammer. Nail File. Potato peeler. 
Ironing board. Drill bit. Wrench.) 

III.

When I was fifteen 
I used my babysitting money 
to buy a French-cut 
one-piece swimsuit. It had 
a black bottom and a striped tank 
with a small red sailboat on the breast. 
I felt European when I wore it 
down to the creek. I sunned 
my haunches in the shallows 
and dozed off. I woke to find 
small leeches up and down 
the length of my thighs.

IV.

There is never a moment when I ask you
What do you want to be? I make you.
I work you. I starve you down to your bones. 
I put iron pills in your pudding.
And when I think I might lose you
I belly-crawl into your room,
spreading out my weight so the loose 
floorboards won’t creak.
I don’t want to disturb you 
from your dreaming.
I want to finally let you be yourself.

V.

In every memory 
I have of my grandad, he’s playing 
Spades. Not with my grandmother, 
but with his cousin’s ex-wife
who my granddad remarried 
after the war left his cousin 
shell-shocked and violent. 
My grandad has a warm face 
and rheumy blue eyes. 
He flips his eyelids inside-out 
to scare us but it makes me laugh.
I’m not a kid anymore, I tell him 
as I leave the house
in my new bathing suit.

VI.

Just think of it,
my soon-to-be poem.
my as-yet-untitled-darling,
you will shatter your light
on shallow moving water.
You will rosy up my winter skin.
and cover me in small leeches, 
undulating and sucking,
each barely thicker than a man’s whisker.
When I brush you away
every one of your mouths
will leave a tiny bleeding bite