By Mary Darby

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A 13-syllable-per-line structured poem that sits with the guilt of womanhood and daughterhood.

There is a black moth in the corner of my bedroom, 

a dead bird outside the cafeteria window.

I sleep naked, mostly. Tangled in omens, feelings.

Socks half off. An ankle tattoo, a piercing or two. 

I write a hundred versions of myself. My breasts: pink

underbelly of a mouse, sorry excuse of a 

chest. My outer thighs: uncooked chicken, goosebumped, pickled, 

pallid. I write a hundred more for my mosaic;

I catch the light. Yes, I have red hair everywhere. I 

add a glass shard. Sorry excuse of a daughter, a

woman, a sister. Don’t text me good morning, don’t tell me

I’m pretty, don’t kiss me so hard and so fast, don’t tell 

me I’m smarter than you thought I was. Yes, I am red 

everywhere. There’s a sickness inside me. No, I don’t 

like it when you touch me. There’s only so much room in my 

womb for pain, but, there might be space, if you rearrange 

all this pleasure, all this shame. Fruit flies linger by the

kitchen sink. No, I’m not eating, not while you’re watching. 

I write a eulogy, an elegy, for daddy.

My daddy who is not dead, who likes twenty year old 

Russian women, who ask him for twenty cents a text.

I sit in contemplation of his death. Counting all 

the ways he might go. Upside, sideways. Then I spend more 

time imagining the relief I’ll feel when he’s gone.

Fruit flies crawl from the folds of his skin. I imagine 

forgiveness: cold, clearing clouds; in, out my mind, unwound.

I imagine grief: the warm smog in my mind after

getting stoned off my ass, waking up the next morning 

trying to remember who I was–am. I am so 

guilty. I add a glass shard. I’ll throw up all over 

myself, all over the ground between us, before get

ting down on my knees and sucking you off. Fruit flies wait 

for him by the kitchen sink. He drops the dinner plate,

hands trembling as he drops it again, trying to clean 

up the mess he made. I watch him dying and I wait.

Process

My poetry writing process is intuitive. This piece took root from a bad dream, then absorbed some strange, superstitious occurrences. Black cats, moths, birds. I put some soil down. I let it grow wild, until it doesn’t look like a poem anymore. I come back every few days to clip some words off. I tie the stems to a syllabic wooden structure, giving the piece shape and intention. One day, I read it out loud, and it sounds complete.