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by Eleanor Ball

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I followed your voice like a fishing-line.
Always, it had been you walking me 

to the edges of things: jungle gyms,
mother’s love, memory. I watched the sea

tossing its head like a newborn foal.
With you, I balanced on the tip of a needle.

I carved lace into knives that cut time, girl,
salt-crusted rock. My body brimmed over itself:

surface tension and snap. Waterfall. 
You lick my wounds and I lick yours. 

My breath the breath 
of the bug-eyed wolf. Suspended. Yowling

in the fabric of time. Paralyzed
in the eye of the mother.

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