Field 2

My mother is a nebula. My mother’s eyes are closed 
like she’s already a ghost. An exoskeleton twins her. 
She collapses time. I never called her my mother.

 

My mother isn’t inside the car but neither is she 
outside the car. Dust disperses. Her hand clutches 
the door. Her hand clutches the door with devotion 

 

and necessity. Her love has painted the body in two-
toned blue. You can’t see it, but the car’s backseat is raw

unupholstered metal. Memory is a host. My dead live

 

here in a corridor of rust thatched together in a

ramshackle structure. The grass is overgrown.
When my mother is pregnant, her voice refracts

 

against porcelain as she spills outward. Her scales 

feather the drain. Seeds spread. The home we left
is a field. I watch the field dismantle the shack,

 

swallow rust. My mother clutches the car’s door
as though it’s what keeps her upright, what keeps her 
from collapsing, what keeps her from vanishing. 

​

Remember the quiet evenings. My mother is liminal. 
My mother is cleft, between worlds. She speaks to me. 
She speaks to me from a mouth filled with clover.