Warm to my cold. I, aye, ayyyahi. Lips for touch. Fingers to lips. Pat, pat, pat. I can hurt her eyes, water, salt. First taste - fish bones in the dark, porridge, tongue burnt, skin to worry. Sssh, she says, ssssh. Touching moss, brick, soft furred things, hard-shelled scurry scurries. When is she coming? When is she coming? Ssssh, ssssh. Must be quiet. Must be still.

Still, he does not come. Noise, he comes to pull me apart again. i remember eyes seeing first time, then pain and darkness, then her saying, wake up now, wake.

I am all sparks. Hot things sizz sizz sss under my skin. She says it is life, this feel, this beginning of me. Fizz under my skin, under hers too, I think, i touch her skin, feel her shake too. Fingertips on lips, sssh, touch mine, fizz. I see myself in the water, not her, behind me. I ripple, break apart. She brings a mirror. No rivers of stitches on her face, but she plucks them from mine, black lines, criss cross, like the bricks. Pretty, she says, but I do not have a me to compare to not pretty.

Memory comes in whispers at night while she sleeps near me. In dreams, I hush, but here I don’t have to. She says, free, just you and me. I wake in dark to fish and porridge, get fatter, now she brings bread, cheese, an orange. Like first sunlight on my skin. Oh, oh! Hard to shush.

She reads to me: clocks, two-headed beasts, pine-apples, pep-per-corns, snay-als. A tiny book, full of things to know and alive. My language leaps, catching my thoughts. Words fly, flutter round the room, land in her red hair, on her face, changing it, crying, laughing, cluck cluck—a puppy, a duckling. I cry. Salt is pretty. It is a bead of light, a tear. I see her face in the tears. I do not like her sad. I cry too. She laughs and she says I am a mirror, a mimic, a minute marionette.

I am in pieces, she says. I am looking for me. I want to be be be. I think of bees and their sting, the sharp pain on my lip. I want, but I fear the dark, the mice. The train moves, rain runs down the glass, cold on my forehead. Hood up, hood down, slap, pat, pat. Look. I see the glass, the mirror, the trees all blurry and my face my face. My face stretches like the train tracks. Yes yes yes me.

Then I see the baby. Smooth white egg. I begin to open my mouth to wail at the difference. Sssh, she says. You pretty thing. Hood over my forehead, so no one sees the gooey part, the dark things in the dark where I came to life when there was none.

I must be quiet, be like her, mirror, mimic, mime.

I pull the hood, up, off, up, off. Wish I were good like Polly in the little book. Pick at my skin, the scars, the scabs. Blood, salt-blood tells me I am alive but not alive, not fully. Dark and sparks, sparks in the dark. My meat remembers burning house, knife under ribs, jump from the bridge, dead baby blood on sheets, sticky and cold.

Those sparks are still in me, but there is another me down one of the tracks, chk chk chk, one before is dying now, i am the whole one now with the fizzy sparks.

With Love,

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