Personal Mythologies

Four stages of a woman’s life

Photo by ketan rajput on Unsplash

I. Birth

Under the flowerless jacaranda tree,

my mother eats me

and throws my bones over the hedge.

Surrounded by clipped hibiscus,

she had made love with her father,

and the stories they needed

spilled beneath them. When rain freshens

parched dirt, old roots swell

with memories, and anything is possible –

me, a green slip of a girl,

made by a monster, in the image of a god.

II. Becoming

More rain. My bones roll in the mud,

collecting twigs for tendons,

fallen blossoms for organs. The muck forms

into flesh. Under the hibiscus,

now an unruly thicket, my pebble eyes roll

toward the spiders — they teach

me how to weave, repeat, design,

how to scare my mother.

III. Lovers

The jacaranda shows me what she sees:

distant water rippling bright