Amanda Torres

re-member-ment 

without knowing, i’ve held my memory underwater 

and it is trying to re-member itself,

scratching at the air as if it had arms, muscle, brachialis, 

had not been pickled clean & smooth as pearls. 

would i have saved them 

if i saw it was the slick gray silver-back of a newborn,

a girl in a floral bathing suit at lake michigan 

hoping no one will see the blood running down her legs. 

not a killing thing, an animal animaling 

in its own habitat, a memory, a moment, 

a you that survived trying so hard 

not to be forgotten. 

i have been so many people i can’t return to 

couldn’t tell you their names, 

addresses, court records, the cars they drove, 

what made me leave. 

i don’t remember anything from that time. i am alive 

because i don’t remember everything. am cut holy 

in pain when they surface, unannounced 

& calling out to me.  

i am alive because of the dead.

have bent to the dark cathedral of night 

to light a candle and prayed fiercely for a father 

even as I released his ashes to the tides. 

to be alive is to be throned 

by corpses, our kingdom, 

a threading of bones.

my friend tells me they’re pregnant 

and i celebrate, 

while rubbing the carousel of bruises 

across my belly where my love

plunges a needle first thing every morning & night

with teeth that rattle out a dosage.

every day we search 

for an unmarked place to drive 

another needle 

shaped like an artery.

and i pretend i can’t see 

her hands shaking, as she asks me 

if i’m ready. 

the tip of the syringe dimpling 

my belly, as we pray 

for an egg, 

even just one,

that might survive 

outside of the tender 

house of this body, 

into hers, where it just might,

it just might 

family, mistaken

two women out together / often / we are asked if we are
sisters / sometimes, we say no / nothing more / sometimes /
we say yes / lean in for a long kiss / tongues dipping and
dancing / visibility, it’s own kind of safety 

my sister and her boyfriends take turns tossing me between
them in a circle / I squeal and press my strawberry milk
hands against each of their cheeks / sable as a spruce /
while people stare / wonder / how we could be / family    

when my godson and another child at the playground fight / 
I bend down / speak to him / like someone he trusts / afterwards / 
a mom tries to hire me / presumed nanny / the queer structure 
of our family unseeable / yet every night / his mother and i / lay him 
between us / and make it up / a story / that might lull him / to dream / of another shape. 

let me say it plain, my wife is not my sister  /  my sister is missing  /  my sister 

is my closest friend  /  my sister’s son is also my sister  /  i am raising sisters  /  i am 

growing them from wheat and corn and whatever else has been left  /  my sisters 

are the field  /  we come from /  sisters  /  the wind  /  my sisters  /  jostling the hair from 

our salt studded necks.