Mummy & I are one

Tony Lee

Mummy & I are one

I had nothing to say to granmama

except in the common place
where words were tailless
reptiles caught dreaming

& their tiny disturbances
even smaller prosthetic echoes

she had a way of
correcting our
speech (a bamboo
swish
whittled to a point
& punctuating
as love isn't) but
over & over again
the same
strap-happy lesson

then I discovered this was
language she gave us in
scars of red-hot scribblings
on arms & legs &
lest we forgot
that our each step swung dictionaries

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