I

Mother might have drowned me,

had she caught me watching her.

I watched her scrub her skin so hard

it seemed to blush. I saw desire there,

before a mother wants to be a mother.

The keyhole—ring of light that skims the flesh—

drew me to the pleasure. I understood

the glistening surface of the belly, the bumpy

shadows of the ribcoast range. I understood

that water scalds, dripping from the wrist.

Everything else, like a lamp

turned on and off, was thought: pure, impure, pure.

II

Years later, I can’t repair the shock of hair

crackling to the static of her brush,

or grant her mermaid’s wishes. I can’t

re-trace her hands: the first amphibians

waiting to emerge. In the beginning

we know too much of everyone

until we fail them, until we see them

as they can’t be seen. When Actaeon

came upon Diana’s naked body

and the dogs made cloth of his flesh,

he knew he’d truly burn. His voice

was not his own, his face not his face.

How could one touch heal all of us?

III

Since I can’t go back

to what I wanted, since the flesh

refuses its own flesh, I can’t suggest

what might have pleased them,

those long-haired creatures whose touch

soothed and satisfied. What pleases them,

these mothers, sisters, lovers,

whose oars row out to the island

I keep lonely? What pleased her

she never said. That night I saw her dream

so sheer, so self-contained, that mist surrounded it.

I never knew its subject matter.

The flesh has its cannibals, its boiling pots.

We prepare the body badly for its future.

Every household is full of crimes.

A moon shines in every window, wanting.

Each night I hold a different woman in my arms.