Ascension
My mother slips out of her skin
to travel the hospital’s halls.
She’s abandoned her body
for a respite from monitors
and the blessed nurses she swats
with a gloved hand. She stretches:
like a milky hatchling under
warm-orange dawn. Then confides
she doesn’t want to live without
my father. She uses the word
amo for the first time. A word
meaning master and ardent love.
She doesn’t offer a smile.
But looks at me matter of fact
as I watch her heels lift off
the sterile floor. She flies:
a little blue heron with her neck
tucked in, her legs trailing behind.
Tongue-Tie
I sweep my finger gently, underneath
his tongue, stretching the lingual
frenulum, a tight fold of tissue
shaping his organ of speech and taste
into a heart. Lingual: Relating to,
resembling, or produced by a supple
matrix of eight muscles, believed
to possess extraordinary strength.
I peer into my son’s mouth, relieved
to identify the cause of his ravenous
whimpers, his insatiable wails.
He is a month old. I fear he is already
boggled down by his bilingual heritage,
two languages pinning a muscle architecture
hungry to move with the agility
of an octopus’ arm, an elephant’s trunk.