He Asks How I Know I Want to be a Mother

I knew inside her in my blue shell girlbird waiting

for my egg tooth to grow she warmed me

her first clutch her weft wormed my mouth

ropes of milk of grandmother great-grandmother

protein mineral moonroot I was of her

my spine her fingernails her pores my voice

her hair seastring binding us mussel & rock

I fledged I feathered in the lee of her

I suckled at her skyblood when I was born

I asked her who would I be she stood next to me

in the mirror she showed me our body

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Arielle Kaplan is a poet and educator from Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from Boston University, where she was the recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. She is a member of AGNI’s editorial team and teaches writing in the Boston area. Her poetry has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bellevue Literary Review, Plume, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. Find her at ariellemkaplan.com.