by Amy Ash

Once, my daughter moved inside me like the memory of music,
cradled in bulge and curve. She was born

in a mosaic of moans, torn from cleaved belly,
abdomen opened, tendon and fascia flayed like strings.

Hammer and damper and wire.

I heard the reverberation of an impossible cry. The curtain
kept her face from mine. As an infant her small fists would play

their way into my mouth, guided by wonder and want.

Now, at the piano bench, skirt fanned wide behind her like a wake,
she reaches into jawbone, ease along the mouth ridge of a whale shark.

Tooth, ivory, tusk, and bone.

My daughter’s posture recalls music played low among lilies
and lace, the fear of peering too close into the open lid of the casket.

Fingers already fluent in the language of loss, she resists song,
refuses to lean into the lift and give of it. I want to hold her

on my lap awhile longer. I want to crawl into this hollow of sound I’ve born.

As she bends her head to read the score, I frame her face in reflection.
I am all shine and swerve, glossy and forgotten. Only an echo

of loss. I collect fingerprints, recording the evidence of her hands.

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Amy Ash is the author of The Open Mouth of the Vase, winner of the 2013 Cider Press Review Book Award and the 2016 Etchings Press Whirling Prize post-publication award for poetry. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Stirring: A Literary Collection, I-70 Review, Erase the Patriarchy, and Rogue Agent. She is Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at Indiana State University.