letters home from the jersey devil ~ Kailey Tedesco

mother,

we keep backtracking. your feet

walk in the opposite direction of your eye-line, yet

again we face each other. i know, i know

your speech forms around the wire of my wing-hair 

seeding your tongue. you cooked

for my siblings (i did not eat them, did you?) on the hearth 

pubic with pine needles.  i can sense you from the sinkholes 

you passed me. your curse-blood 

still courses in time with mine. save

your milk-wet excuses. i did not require your nursing. 

you built me out of kindling &, as such, 

i am fathered by a specific branch-snap somewhere in the distance

of another’s midnight. i will never know its sound. mother, 

fetch a lantern & search me out. i have been waiting 

to nuzzle your hairbrush. 

i think together we are a sort of wind-gust, something 

that perpetuates a movement no one else 

can ever really see. maybe you made my bones

tasteless on purpose. maybe i’m the only

of your flesh whose neck 

would not tolerate a bow.