I won’t explain. My aunts spell
around the vanity mirror
& centerpiece me, my lips plummed,
my neck belled mid-flight.

After the food’s uncooked, the heirloom paring knife
stitched up the bell peppers & dark meat,
after the fiddle leaves
left their fiddles, the porch undressed of wasps & us
our old names—
right here. As if even the evening
didn’t let on. No parking lot, no gas stations. A scythe
of emptied prisons shudder
alongside the highway; bougainvillea
& gun oil in the sheets. All my cousins slow-dancing
in their cowboy boots & antlers.

My mothers singing to the dogwood tree
blooming black across my arm.

Your hand finally on the small of my back, without any kind of fear.

This time, I’ll be a girl & you can be anything
alive. Take the rope off your wrists.
Somewhere far away from here,
a star’s unspooling its star-white curtain.

What happens if we begin already angels?
Press your ears to my wingspan. Hum a little.

We are the most possible kind of daughterhood.
I promise.

Step into the light.
Let me see the mark our rapture left behind.

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