Cell Talk

I ate and ate, all mouth.
At night there was no difference
between me and the chewing dark

that worked its way along walls,
slipped through windows, pressed
against air. I took leaves, books, secrets.

I took and took. Remembering how
little I'd begun with impelled me—
the cell that split, the cell

that didn't, the whole
chance enterprise of seed and ovum,
me. I had been told I was safe.

But weren't there currents in water?
Fires that could start on their own?
I took every care when I went where I went

as I had when my mother gave orders
my blood woke to, my bones: Take.
Eat. I went on obeying, as if I had always

known I would taste nothing
but her name when she was no longer
with me, hunger I would never eat away.

Copyright © 2006 Lynne Knight All rights reserved
from Night in the Shape of a Mirror
David Robert Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission