The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Love as Invasive Species by Ellen Kombiyil

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Prayer

Side A

Daughter, if I forget to teach you
to hunger, to sup as I did,
ice chips in the lawless
4 a.m. labor, awake
w/ foot-kick & elbow-scrape,
the body’s rhythmic
snoozing, then follow this
dull ache that insists
the body open. Here,
at the length-of-a-vein,
from navel’s hollow to
how-low-the-azalea-bloom,
your propulsion into
the expectant room.

O, to hold or be held,
to unspool like loose thread! –
the hospital gown spilling
behind you—how far
it must stretch! Unraveling
when you climb the steps,
press your fingers to check
the spider plant’s thirst,
until the garment gives
out & who knows when—
O, to block-print
in felt-tip on the bracelet
circling your wrist,
Hello, my name is ________.

Side B

Daughter, you filled a shoebox
with dead wasps, leaf blankets,

cut needles shot from pine,
painted the cardboard

black to keep the light
inside. It was a good day,

an ice cube tray
full and cracked and split,

the water shaped to hold
in our mouths. There was no

treasure. Cool liquid
slid down our throats

in the garden. I quizzed you
for your biology final—

all alveoli and exchange
of oxygen. Tomato plants

hummed, fledglings
squawked for their mama’s return,

and the sun blazed dewdrops
to extinction.

               World spinning through dark and dark
               itself spiraling (yes, spiraling!) through the void

               future world with both of us gone
               that from a distance shone like a star

Science, do not forsake us.
Pretend dying won’t be inglorious

and hard, that we’ll reflect light like gowns
sequined and glittering, various

and continual, shouting out over
time our urgent unimpeded burning.

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Editor’s Note from Love as Invasive Species:

The book these poems appear in was originally imagined as, and is printed as, a têtebêche or “double book.” The poems in Side A and Side B mirror and respond to each other. Some companion poems share exact titles, while others share shadow titles, which appear in grayscale on the poem page.

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