Duplex

No one knows how the body reattaches.
In the dark, I wait like a pale scar.

In the dark, I wait, impatient and scarred.
My mother tells me, Forget about hope.

I can tell my mother remembers hope
when she discards her legs in the night.

When she discards her legs in the night,
my mother flies back to the land of salt.

My mother flies, back in the land of salt.
Above the Spanish roofs is the red morning.

The Spanish roofs are red and mourning.
They know she can never stay for long.

I know why she never stays for long.
No one knows how the body reattaches.

Noreen Ocampo is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work can also most recently be found in Marías at Sampaguitas, trampset, and Rejection Letters. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. Say hi on Twitter @maybenoreen!