Ferry

A liminal start
three nights
running, remembering
Ruby slippers, clicking.
The way home is easy,
but somewhere back and back,
I forget the cradle
of my diaphragm,
its rocking

Now, my pedal to metal,
I can barely pause to tell you this...
that last night I finally remembered
that forgotten thing:
my third arm,
or that I’ve always spoken Cantonese,
or that my flute master
is still waiting for me,
twenty-three years later,
in her mahogany parlor.

It slapped me awake, bright and insistent,
then hopped back onto the ferry,
disappearing
with all of its rigging,
into the mist

Across the night sky,
my mother rises
at 3 am, stumbles around the house.
Every moment, now, a ferry
she has just missed,
trying to remember what she has
forgotten,
crib sheets tucked into her sleeve
with the names of the children
who cracked open her rocking pelvis
seven times.
This boat too, taken back
downriver,
this life,
an overripe berry,
dissolving,
on the tip
of her tongue