let’s say we had a daughter
let’s say we had a daughter
our daughter proximal to the apple-tree but never partaking of apples. not simply nor straightforwardly, in a way that makes good use of all the apple.
our daughter who slipshods herself a compass, loves the irony of being lost but not the certainty.
who has never not been a hillock for toy horses and their men.
a man says bite down and our daughter bites down. a vial says drink this and our daughter drinks this, not worrying the this or the where or the how.
not questioning why the frost wants her so badly to undress, her body a shadow upon snowfield, arctic breadth of fulmars.
our daughter who intrudes on herself undressing, apologizes but cannot stop from staring.
who weirds the body's impulse to do again what has been done before,
in the made-dark room with only breath as companion, counting the seams where she spills out and over, as river into road.
our daughter whom we eulogize, euphemize, orphan canonically, leave lonely to name her loved things alone. who cannot touch what has been named and cannot name what wants for touching.
you don't think it's our daughter unless she's prostrate by her bedframe but our daughter is by her bedframe and our daughter is in the city and our daughter is reinventing the measure from city to shore,
with even little writer steps, and herself the pen.
I don't mean to raise your haunches, your gates, your palisades of terror. you may unwring your hands. I don't wish a cure for our daughter, a corral for our daughter,
our irredeemable, clay-and-filth daughter, our look-at-our-daughter daughter, our roiling myth of daughter so nearly sprung from spume or spittle I could chew her almost-cheek.
Indrani Sengupta (she/her)
Indrani Sengupta is an Indian American poet and Kundiman fellow whose work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Colorado Review, 32 Poems, Black Warrior Review, The Offing, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere.