Читать книгу Saudade - Traci Brimhall - Страница 8

The Last Time I Saw My Daughter’s Eyes, They Were on the Back of a Moth’s Wings

I’m almost ready to give her up for dead. I tried

believing she’ll appear someday on a boat from

downriver where she’s been making a living

as a dancer who glues yellow feathers to her breasts

and lets tourists eat maracujá from her navel.

I tried the easier faith of a gift-bearing God who

serves the whim of prayer, but all I got was this

ambitious hope, this heart that hangs upside down

in my ribs, blind and nocturnal and a glutton for fruit.

In a past life, I drowned with a rattlesnake wrapped

around my ankle. In another one, I danced for

a father’s obedience. In this one, I throw a rope over

a ceiling beam and let it dangle over my bed. Its abiding

creak rocks me to sleep where John the Baptist comes

for me with a basilisk on his shoulders, calls me

by my maiden name, and says: You have been weighed

and measured and found wanting stilettos and a lipstick

named Prima Donna. It’s not true, I try to say,

but each letter carves itself into a tree and holds

its blackness like a mirror. I see myself in every word,

only younger. I wake as libidinous and sincere

as Caruso in the morning lamenting his lost horse

on a Victrola. The rope above my bed is gone

and John the Baptist’s head sits on my chest

like a wish seeking entrance to a well. Where is she?

I ask, turning his head over in my hands three times.

He opens his mouth to let down the flood.