Dissolution of a Daughter

She neglects to wipe the vomit from the underside of the toilet seat. She is unaware. Pieces of
roasted pork stick to the porcelain. She buries dead geraniums in her Baba’s old hatbox. She
blesses them with holy water she steals from the hand dipper at St Mary of the Sorrowful on
Catalpa Street. The retired nuns blessed the liquid with a thousand Hail Marys. She is unaware.
There are prayers breathing in the petals, incantations keening in the veins of the leaves. The
edges of her eyelashes are frayed. She twitches at them in her sleep. She is unaware. I find
them on her pillowcase on Laundry Tuesdays. They are painted with violet mascara. They glow
in the dark. I want to wrap myself around her. Slip my hands inside the woven basket that is her
body. A waffle weave unravelling. I am punctured by her clavicle. Pricked by each rib bone.
Her umbilical scar is laced with pewter piercings, rings that rattle as she squirms and swims
upstream. She ruptures between my fingers. She is unaware. I attempt to weave her braided
sweetgrass self back together. My fingers clumsy gum glue. My hands birds of paradise trapped
in cellophane. Neither of us can breathe as I navigate my way from bone to bone.