Primordial We

her voice in my throat
my cheek on her neck
I crave the socket of those generous years when we walked and walked  
in carefree cartons of skin through palaces of plenty

just off the highway 
dawn bounced along honeysuckle’s immortal beauty 
fried drumsticks dripped grease, we baptized coarse grits in butter
our Southern mouths gorged on faithful feeling

how needless we were in this sweet spot of effortless being 
before grocery lists and wheelchairs 
snagged our filmy curtain

there is no solitude 
like ours

I crave the cave of my mom’s body
its snow-covered paths where the round sun reclined 
on bedsheets stained with chocolate and maple syrup
the fluff of her pancakes hot on my breath, her chin tucked against
my doll-baby springs, blessed first music of her thumping heart
horrific proof 
down an ordinary drain

even in paradise she couldn’t  
not die

I touched her swollen knuckles, the pit in her sternum
her muscled arms, her sumptuous thighs
hungry for her circumference, 
its interior

I craved to eat my mom’s body, 
to restore the cord of our bond, to play it all in 
reverse like the Mister Rogers cassettes she rewinded 
as she pressed on white pedals to my ballet recitals and gymnastics classes
to dissolve my body into a lens I could see through 
with my mind

I tilted the mirror of my 
closed eyes to photograph breasts she wore across 
cancer’s clashes

we folded up in each other’s wonderful
eyelashes blinking the clammy sustenance of 
reformed moonlight

I bowed an ear to the ocean of 
her bowels, to mine the sacred 
rhythms of her lungs

her arms wreathed me in the silk kimono of 
her womb as though
my body never moved out

she passed her soul on 
right there on her common mattress  
I curled into her morning body, clefts in its vessel
earthenware of we  

I don’t know how she did it
shaped me into a kind of life she made up 
as she went along 
slathered my every limb in 
vanilla lotion and grape bubbles 

I crave to throw myself back 
onto us
that pile of half-asleep legs, sensual organs exquisitely 
tied into constituent elements of guileless vision 
turning to look
at itself