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|we would not let you go into the dark alone|
—not without our arms ringed round you—
:: floating still next to the line. It looked at her silently, without reproach, and slowly closed the morsel of pig-gut in its mouth ::
*and the tear was so wide and so great in her*
/that mother never gave the trees another daughter/
|and told us the story of the fish and the cassia|
{while we stirred the soup}
We birth each other, over and over, Mouth to Mouth, and it is still dark, but seven clutch each other,
(seven clutch you)
and seven clutch me, and I
[we]
do not remember any longer whether I am eighth or first or last,
*there are eight, always eight*
I do not remember any longer what mother looked like, but their
—our—
cool black braids lie over
/all of us/
me like first kisses.
:: My first meal was the mash of that fish’s black eyes ::
My first meal was the slippery skin of those velvet jellyfish, and in those days we were so like each other, but they did not speak to me like my selves do now, and
{we never bled}
|but we ate|
(and we grew)
:: Please, it is cold out here, and I am alone. I taste of cinnamon, and I will lie soft on your tongue. Let me touch your skin—it flames blue and sere!—but let me touch it, let me pry open your lips. It is cold, I want my sisters, I want to be eight-in-one, I have heard them whispering and I know they want me. Lonely little leech, I don’t want the soup of eyes. I don’t want the bitter tea. I don’t want the birth story, the cassia or the persimmon, the plum or the cherry, the weeds or the eyes. I will be your Onogoro, and you will be my Heaven-Spanning Bridge, and I will never leave you. ::
Kushinada, where will I go, when you are all inside me?
/Hush, now, we are infinitely tractable/
(Don’t you know how far women stretch?)
*There is room, there is room, always room for our sister, our jewel, our little cinnamon-suckling babe*
:: Let me in ::
Kushinada!
