At twelve I was sure. This body

would belong, even briefly, to no other.

I had watched my mother

with my sister and I, the two

children that were meant to change

her life (we changed her life),

and it did not look enticing. The days

had an edge to them, and I remember

it not like a knife, but something

blunter, something that scraped,

and was rusted, and hurt

in a slow and dull way that rarely

showed. Sometimes I wished

for blood, as if that would make it easier.

Bruised. We were all bruised. 
Her voice was this beautiful thing, low

and strong but with a break. She insisted

that she couldn’t sing, but she did. She sang

me into each day, and carried me through

the night. Language that tore but also

soothed, her voice, the tone of her, running

through my lymbic system, coating my amygdala,

teaching my cingulate cortex about pain. 
But sometimes we’d put Buddy Holly

or X-Ray Specs on the record player,

the plastic arm hooking across, the needle

coming down to rest and crackle across

vinyl, and sing, and dance on the floorboards.

Six feet banging down, chalk dust

and crayon crumbs flying up, and over it all

her reaching voice, that cracked on the no more.
It was 1979, and we were blonde girl children

with a mother who was cracking, yelling

bondage up yours and jumping off

second hand couches like we could fly.

It was 1979, and my mother was writing

for Spare Rib and wearing overalls

and gymboots and smoking rollies

and taking us to rallies. 
We swam naked in the Hyde Park fountains

after Land Rights marches. Cold brown water,

one cent pieces glinting on the concrete bottom,

too far down to reach. The feel

of a metal turtle back between my five year old

legs, cool and hard and round. Balancing

on a turtle shell and dangling my legs

and looking up at the fig tree canopy, so green,

with the sun on my back, and looking over

at my sister dog paddling to the edge, her hair

gone stringy, so blonde it was almost white. 
Don’t think it was all bruises and cracking. There

were moments like these. There were always

moments like these: metal, and sun, and green,

and cold to the knees, and later water

and apples on the bus home,

and my mother smoking (because

you could then), and us rolling up our white and purple tickets

and pretending to do the same.