my skin crawls with phantom legs
a learned response
in childhood
my home was planted on the edge of a southern forest
my bedroom window turned my room lighthouse
summoned all the underbrush crawlers to nest inside
i left the window open in mid-july
the scent of my sleep sweat sung across the wood
an invitation i didn’t know i handed out
i woke to find i’d been invaded
the second story security
scattered scuttled
along the walls the floor the bed
nothing mine but my scream wide mouth eyes shut
and my parents ran in
swore it was all a dream
i knew they were wrong
and that they must be right:
if i had not dreamed it
it would become another shedskindust
to sweep under the rug
so i—dutiful daughter despite the damage—
let it slink out of the room
this shadow i could never name again
until
in adolescence
i’d grown older by a fistful of months
and a few familial fractures
living in a selfish house with
no room for our growing bodies
i left the door open
a memory of fresh air
the hall light like the moon
a warm, dim glow
slung across the wooden slats
to the foot of my bed
there is an animal part of us that thrives on instinct:
some feral ghost trapped in sinew
follows the light finds a bone to suck dry
sucks the bone dry uncovers a feast
some of our ghosts are the feast
the bloody wreckage left behind
everything glows in amber:
i remember no sharp teeth
no dirt under my nails
no soft lullaby of smothering
i remember what has no name:
the feeling of hands like bugs like fingers like
crawling like
a touch can steal my breath in all the wrong ways
i did not scream. i remembered that much.
when they came, the room would be empty
and my body would be hollow
and they’d shake their heads and say a dream
a dream with hands like eyes like
a boy with my blood and yet none of it like
a bug sucks blood and knows nothing else like
i left the door open, so.
i slept on top of the covers, so.
i had this dream before, so.
a dream can’t hurt you if you’re still, so.
i closed my eyes. waited for everything to end.
felt my skin crawl away with him
that good ghost dribbled out of his hungry
hands.
in time
these old dreams like unseen cobwebs
startle me back to the past.
melt into one swampy puddle, slip through my fingers.
i mix the bugs with the boy until they are one:
thorax against my thigh. antennae over my stomach.
his mouth opens to whisper he’s sorry
and a thousand slugs fall out.
A RHYTHM A PATTERN
the language of history
& mine raves in the streets
a seized capillary pulsing
the inherited panic
bathes in my aorta
what is history if not
a vein that pumps from
the heart
of where you come from
& who brought you
into today
& who leaves you
made better or worse
guilt is the heartsong
i will sing at my funeral
i am the ventricle
through which it all flows
never the daughter or sister or girl
but the hollow
through which everything falls
apart
ANOTHER NOTE ABOUT MY FATHER
spring semester of my sophomore year of college
my father told me without my love, he would kill himself.
I have always been the confessional booth &
the silent deity on the other side.
guilt, the noose that ties me to home.
he slips his head in the loop & tosses me the other end.
when I try to leave
we will all come swinging down.
THE DREAM
after Felix Pollack
I dreamt of my brother disappearing and returning as a doll.
Guilt, said my therapist.
You should call home more, said my father.
Grief is a twisted comfort, said my love.
You miss him as a child, said my therapist.
The phone works both ways, I said to my father’s voicemail.
You hold a lot of love in your heart and it curdles
because you leave it there, said the fog.
I dreamt he disappeared & what I meant is he died
& they gave me a doll to mourn over, I said.
Guilt twists itself into grief, said my therapist.
Who would you be without your mourning? said the fog.
Everyone always dreams about me
doing what they don’t want me to do, said my brother.
I don’t want you to die, I said.
But then I won’t grow older, he said. Then I’ll be young forever.
We all dream of dying, said my father.
We don’t always get to follow our dreams, said the fog.
I just wanted to fly, said my brother. You’ll always see me in the mourning.
SURVIVOR’S WEIGHT
all the small boys on the street
look like my brothers. all the
small boys are sunkissed. they
eat joy. their freckles spell my
name and my freckles spell theirs.
all the small boys are my brothers.
I walk away from them. all the
small boys are my brothers. they’re
all strangers. a small brown boy
jumped in front of the bullets to
protect his classmates and I avoid
all the videos. I am a coward and
all the small brown boys are dying.
when we were placed in foster care
they took Jack from me. put him in
a different home. he would be down
the road, they said to me. he’ll be
safe and you can be a child. it was
all foreign to me. like he is. I love all
the small boys on the street because
they don’t know how I hurt them. I
love my brothers more than I hate
myself and that’s why I didn’t run
until it wasn’t running away. it was
going to college. a small brown boy
jumped in front of the bullets and
now he doesn’t get to go to college.
I wanted to be that child and now
my brothers aren’t going to college.
we don’t all get to choose how we
escape but I did. all I regret is that
I don’t regret my choice enough.
CROWN GARLAND
when i found out steven was in jail
(steven is my brother. the middle child.
the boy i raised. the boy i fed. the boy
with a feral laugh and a homesick cry.
steven is a piece of my soul. my brother—
my child. i was a child when i raised him:
children raising children. then i left.
i left. each thought backward threatened
to
turn me salt. threatened to turn me
stone. threatened to send him back to hell.
it could be any myth. he and i both know
the tender way a knife slides out of muscle
like a person slides out of the house at night.
blood comes from the holding and we never
grasped how to unfurl our fists.
pride clouds my throat like a bone. i am
left to choke on curdled apologies. i
sound selfish, and it’s because i am. i
could never love him more than myself.
steven, i apologize too late. i come
home and the locks have been changed
and the children have been changed, too.
steven, my soul was splintered long ago
and the cracks have filled with guilt. it
looks like old smiles and the first summer
you ran away. sorry i didn’t look longer.
sorry i stopped looking at all. my eyes
aren’t closed anymore. i keep calling
olly olly oxen free. it’s getting dark.
you can come home now. it’s safe. you’re
safe.)
i waited two days to cry.
CLOUDMOTHER
Nina doesn’t dream of motherhood. Nina doesn’t have anything to prove. Nina doesn’t run her tongue over inherited trauma. Nina is not afraid of what rattles in her brain. She knows the names of the plagues. Names are the difference between cured and curdled. Nina knows this. Nina finds power in the names. Nina knows what is hereditary and what can be cleansed with attention. Nina is a master of attention. Nina doesn’t imagine the ways a child could be ruined: a bloody birth, the argument that breaks the dishes, words as sharp as the slap, mornings coated in slick smoke, a fist that impresses the wall, a stray comment, a stray bullet, a bullet on target, curdled love, herself, the wrong babysitter, the wrong choice, the wrong name. Nina doesn’t dwell on fear. Nina doesn’t dwell on wonder. Nina is not afraid. Nina doesn’t think parenting requires a prerequisite. Nina thinks she could be a good parent and the thought alone satisfies. Nina has never felt unequipped. Really, Nina isn’t afraid of herself. Really, that’s all it takes.
PRO-CHOICE
i was unwanted.
my first name was
how could you do this to me?
they love me now, yes.
doesn’t alleviate the sting.
sometimes, i’m mean
to the people that love me
because i know i’m not
supposed to be here.
i took this life
from her.
whoever my mother
could have been
if she’d had a choice.
WHITE RIVER WRITES HOME
I love you. I used to want it simpler, yet
I am of your mold. The fact of love is all it takes.
Like you, I worry what you’d think of me
if you knew the whole truth. Dad, I am just a girl:
clove and cinnamon, two clasped daisies,
a load-bearing responsibility. I know you
love me, Dad, and I know the parts of me
you hate. Daughter is not enough context
to cover it all. I don’t keep you at an arm’s
length because of your heart. It’s mine.
My heart is a messy liar. The silence between
us shoves everything under the bed. A clean
room hides my iridescent heart. A stunted
tongue stutters blood over the past and becomes
the truth to everyone who wasn’t there.
A metaphor blurs the face of who you call
daughter even when she doesn’t call you.
I want you to love me and I want to be the
sole bearer of truth. The two are only aligned
in silence. So I was quiet. I need to be loud now,
Dad. I need my love to gleam in the sunlight.
I used to dream we remained as ghosts.
We haunted a new family and never talked
about our own. We ached for the sun. Love
doesn’t belong to ghosts, Dad. Love belongs
to the living. I am alive, Dad. I tended to the blooms
I watched you cut at the root. Here is the sun:
I could love a woman like I love my man.
I’d want you to love her like you love me:
honest, unquestioned, shameless. But you can’t
if you don’t know. Now you know. You were
always afraid I’d never be able to love. You
worried you had scratched that part of my heart
to dirt. Love is alive in me, Dad. I love myself,
Dad. You could give up on me now and I
wouldn’t starve. But I’d never be full.
Forgiveness is not a relentless feast. It is a slow
turn toward the light. I ask shame to leave
and reverse its mantras:
I am good.
No parts of me are broken.
I am not a shattered mirror.
I am a human with a great capacity for delight.
I am loved and become love in return.
I forgive myself
and, always, myself is also you.
MY FATHER’S EULOGY, EDITED
we are here to celebrate
a good father
we gathered here to honor
his name
he always wanted me to
remember
his name
he was something
special
he
always dreamed of living
he did love me
&
isn’t that all I yearned to know
?
NINA REDUX
Nina doesn’t practice the piano. Nina doesn’t eat sweet potatoes. Nina doesn’t kiss her girlfriend in secret or in public or at all. Nina doesn’t know the taste of her brother’s cooking. Nina doesn’t praise her father’s success. Nina doesn’t cherish the melody of her mother’s true laugh. Nina doesn’t craft her children’s middle names. Nina doesn’t clip coupons, doesn’t tend to the tulips, doesn’t walk Harriet twice a day. Nina doesn’t learn forgiveness is not a metaphor but an eternal gift. Nina doesn’t have the walks to Blockbuster. Nina doesn’t have the drive to Disney World. Nina doesn’t press the good memories for preservation. Nina doesn’t learn sacrifice is the seed of gratitude. Nina doesn’t learn that survival is the sprout of everyone that cried before. Nina doesn’t carry her mother’s trauma in her locket, her father’s grief in her wallet. Nina doesn’t carry her parents’ love in her spine. Nina can’t celebrate her brothers’ victory. Nina can’t call home, call back, call forth. Nina can’t live. Nina is the handcrafted portrait of the southern woods at dusk, and I am the view through the window: in motion, untouchable, drenched in the sun.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have an immense amount of gratitude to these publications for housing the following poems, some in different forms:
Electric Moon Magazine: “I Am All the Roots”
indicia: “Flypaper”
Blue River Review: “Family Portrait, 1995”
I am so incredibly thankful to Button Poetry for believing in this book and me.
Thank you to the folks who read the early drafts of this manuscript. You helped me shape these scribblings into a coherent exploration of self: Hanif Abdurraqib, Safia Elhillo, Kevin Kantor, Sienna Burnett, Emryse Geye, Devin Devine, Madeline Lessing.
I’m eternally grateful to the artists that I have learned from, some of whom I am lucky enough to call my friends. I have gleaned and hoarded and cherished everything you have gifted me: Bernard Ferguson, Daniela Aguilar, Gina Conto, Spencer Althoff, Grace Hutchings, Alina Burgos, Hannah Carmichael, Adrienne Novy, Caroline M. Watson, Teagan Walsh-Davis, Felix Mayes, Dru Smith, Rashaad Hall, Ken Arkind, Carrie Rudzinski, Isaac Gomez, Jesse Parent, Billy Tuggle, Hannah Clark, Sarah Brown, Kati
e Becker Colón, Ezra Colón, Matthew Olson, Sarah Adler, Jessie Ellingsen, Hieu Ngyuen, Dylan Garity, Neil Hilborn, Madison Mae Parker, Hilary Williams, Spencer Huffman, and countless others.
Thank you to my internet friends: Alethea, Sondra, Lydia, Molly, Lauren, Kelsey, Sarah, Aliera, Dree, Daniel, the rest—Alice and I are always indebted to you. Thank you for giving me a safe place to grow.
I want to thank Opera House, Friendship Ave, all three CUPSI teams. I would have never made it out of college alive if it weren’t for your constant companionship, love, tenacity.
Thank you to the 22nd class. #48hands
Thank you to Chris Stewart and Maya Garcia. You have never given up on me and I will never give up on you.
I want to say thank you to the educators that got me here, and specifically to Brian Eanes. I think everyone in the world needs an educator like you. You were my first champion. I’ll never be able to repay you.
I want to thank you, Sam. I trust you. I love you. Thank you for everything.
I want to thank my family. It takes a village, and mine is the best. Mom, Dad, Steven, Jack: I love you. It is as simple and complex as that. You helped shape me into the person I’ve become. I love her, and I love you.
Thank you, reader, for picking this book out of thousands and making it this far.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bianca Phipps (she/her) is a queer Latinx poet, actor, and teaching artist raised in San Antonio, Texas. Her work has been featured in different mediums and in different places, including Button Poetry, Blue River Review, Electric Moon Magazine, indicia, Persephone’s Daughters, and others. Phipps’ theatrical credits include Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Julius Caesar (Nebraska Shakespeare), Hamlet (Midsommer Flight), I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (u/s, Steppenwolf), Welcome to Keene, New Hampshire (Strawdog Theater), and others. She is an Aquarius, an Enneagram 2, and a Slytherin. She currently lives in Chicago.
Twitter: @biancajphipps
Instagram: @biancaphipps
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