The Rabbit As A Mouth
My mother sobs her stories so softly that she is smiling.
Every daughter perches on her knees
and learns to wobble, learns to spill over ledges.
We were determined for an ending but didn’t know
which. So she taught us the only one she knew:
old shoelaces. My mother cradled these
more carefully than she did her daughters,
gently as glass vases that reckless hands shatter so easily.
The laces were so simple and so quickly bound.
Polyester. Cotton. Made from so many knots
and here we were to make another.
The body of the lace would consume itself,
ears of a bunny sweeping together
until all she has is breath. Silence. Body.
My mother cried again. Begged us to attempt willingly.
We were daughters in pollen-stained skirts
with bare feet, bare hands.
Our swollen fingers stilled, hesitant to press, to swallow
another choking point. I reach.
I sink my fingertips into my mother’s cheek, pins into fabric.
Without trying, we have already bled.
They tell me this is the nature of womanhood,
these flushed cheeks and closed eyes. This ache.
A hold on simplicity, things that can be done
without thought. Quietly. Our fingers twisting
over a budding knot that resembles the noose.
My sisters watch, hushed; for the first time,
we have chosen our silence.
My nails wrap around one another;
this is the closest a daughter comes
to forming a fist.
Our hands held so taut they are red,
this is almost the ending we asked for.
Blood taunting wind. A taste of violence.
When have we ever brought bleeding?
Tying the ends of these laces,
I am spelling a prayer in hot air.
Begging again for a freedom that will not come.
The breaths of daughters are mingling
and we pretend we are holy
as the empty space we fill. And the air. And the knot.
My mother sews threads thin as hair between us:
with the parting of her flesh, she called for our bodies
to emerge bound. By our blood. By red canvas sneakers
we use to swallow our feet. I bind my sisters
into these second mouths.
Suddenly, we are heavier. My mother hums a hymn. A psalm.
So many stories spill from her tongue and lap
at our ankles. We are begging to run but have tied ourselves
to the sweeping loops of our laces. They semble tears.
I lift a foot, and with it, a sorrow.
The laces drag us and our hollows through the rain,
undo to leave us as we were made to be,
undo to leave us kneeling.
Ela Kini is a student based in New York. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the West Trestle Review and Eunoia. She has additionally been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and the New York Society Library.