Broken Line with Subtitles. Devon Miller-Duggan.

Broken Line with Subtitles

after Danez Smith

I had a sister.
Childbirth broke my mother’s back

I forgot to pray for my sister.
and dammed the river of my sister’s mind

I beat my father away from them both.
and left me fatherless as a field

I had a father.
and bruising myself against the walls of night—

I scraped my hands on my rose-papered wall.
the baby who cried the dark hours—I reached through the walls and gathered her

I walked away.
so we two, my roses, the bed the parents bought me

I cut the stems of roses and give them to water.
made a forest too dense for parents to enter,

I cut my tongue, wrapped the baby in mosses, left her.
then I walked out alone, stepping branch to branch until I came to ocean.

Devon Miller-Duggan