My Nothings by Ama Codjoe

My Nothings

 

You, who have bowed your head, shed

another season of antlers at my feet, for years 

 

you fall asleep to the lullabies of dolls,

cotton-stuffed and frayed, ears damp with sleep 

 

and saliva, scalps knotted with yarn, milk-breath,

and yawns. Birth is a torn ticket stub, a sugar 

 

cone wrapped in a paper sleeve, the blackest

ice. It has been called irretrievable, a foreign 

 

coin, the moon’s slip, showing, a pair

of new shoes rubbing raw your heel. 

 

I lose the back of my earring and bend

the metal in such a way as to keep it 

 

fastened to me. In the universe where we are

strangers, you kick with fury, impatient 

 

as grass. I have eaten all your names.

In this garden you are blue ink, baseball cap 

 

wishbone, pulled teeth, wet sand, hourglass.

There are locks of your hair in the robin’s nest 

 

and clogging the shower drain. You, who are

covered in feathers, who have witnessed birth 

 

give birth to death and watched death suck

her purple nipple. You long for a mother 

 

like death’s mother, want to nurse until drunk

you dream of minnows swimming 

 

through your ears—their iridescence causing

you to blink, your arms twitching. 

 

Even while you sleep I feed you.