Daughter of Paper

Where were the fathers
the day that I found
a universe
of casualties so lovely, so vast?
I was a small child when I found you,
a vast ocean
in the lap of my mother.
Remember the cold clouds around her waist,
and even
in the green of gardens
the past knows how to find you.
I felt drunk before I even knew how to get that way.
I am the daughter of paper:
I dreamt pinks, or
wild golds crashing themselves
into greens into blacks.
Remember the blue
the vast, unstopping blue
of learning
and find for yourself
child
the soil of language,
and don’t forget when I was
a sky child,
drinking dust
before the time of art.
Where is the riot of the self
on the page?

Let me hold you there. Let me hold you there.
I was your baby, your first baby,
and it was you
who showed me how
to create the world.

I look at the horizon,
a sky coarse through the
grass,
dancing off,
washing the bellies of
birds,
making the backs of
horses heavy with joy:
Blue joy, pink joy, yellow joy.