Adaptation

Once living in blue,
how deep the hand in my head 
loved by a hungry sky

would become sharp of edges, 

ripped my born wings that
a songbird bound; crawled 

crushed flowers placed
in pockets I thought

could weave a crown.

It was that I knew first
having arms of cirrus: 

insubstantial and searching
like water feels every

form of inauthenticity
and fills it;

I would bleed when needed 
and not wanting to die 

have untied each 
found fiction to see 
its kinked rope.
 
When once there was 
first, forced inattention

like my mother unable to
hug when unwatched

could it be enough 
that never like her father 
left her broken,

she only left –

and a love that made me 
has tried to take me 
and save me same

stumbling into what is
familiar, many times

until older, I have felt
long beneath a snow 

like a seed dreams of
a tree they will know.