from “Fecund”
Katie Ebbitt | Fecund | Keith LLC | August 2024
XIV
These years
have been
a tangle of
agitation
anger
weariness
insufficient
bare
enteral
death
scarily born
physiognomy
the bad
and good
inseparable
a laundry list
accumulates
throughout
friendships
minutes
strange men
hard work
subjective experience
XV
I exist
enough
to ask
a question
unutterable
unanswerable
call
promise
narration out
of itself
leave
behind
what was
a central theme
undo a plot
point that was
so invested
in one’s personhood
separation meant
becoming someone new
my spirit is
a defeated
suicide
disproportion
in this arranged
and animal world
XVI
You sang
to me at
night and
said
something
I couldn’t
hear
me
being very
small the
distance to
you is
guesswork
an echo
spiracle
the games
I played
with myself
had rules
demanding
an abject
innocence
XVII
I like to think
there was a
blueprint I
could give to
you something
that remembered
my tenuous
but not absent
control
XVIII
I remember my
own baby hands
the fragile nail
the still curves
the same
gentle slip
the lines
soaked
my skin
the wetness
a child an
aquatic mammal
that chose to
beach itself
perhaps even
a mermaid
giving up her
gills
gasping
if there is a
gentleness it
is a wish to
always leave
myself alone
to hide
away
go
back to
the water
XIX
Home is
an inward
direction
a sequela
that polishes
your heart
XX
Have I
told you
I love
you
more
than life
today?
Has
immaturity
questioned
the
meaningfulness
of this
love?
XXI
We are
not utilizing
the “it”
factor
you know
what you
have and
I will know
when
you’re gone
XXII
I remain
sorry to
have lived
this way
under
moonlight’s
temper
more awake
than my
condition
in the dark
I was neither
there
nor here
a few years
of false labor
to recognize
there was
no intimacy
no jointly
created form
while the false
labor failed
another
real labor
began
pains
from two
sources
one ecstatic
plural version
and the other
singular rival
barely more
than a ghost
to try to
remember
this
unfelt
feeling
to disarm
oneself in
the belief
of their
re-existence
From Fecund by Katie Ebbitt.
Copyright © 2024 Katie Ebbitt.
Reprinted with permission of Keith LLC.