First Estrangement
–Aracelis Girmay

I do not remember back then
when I was trying to leave one world
for the next, my girl-mother on the table,
all her darkness torn
for our two-headedness,

when around our violence, floated
the universe

years away from that staggering
out of one depth into another,
I remember her when I crack, again,
open the (already) starlight of the pomegranate,
when I bow my ear down toward it like a deer
without knowing why or from where
the hunger comes, faintly it screams

the memory of stars,
of estrangement, the lungs
pumping with air

I take, & take
what I cannot give back

Photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash