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I wanted Child – named what? – placed on my left (I’m right-handed) but Painter arranged us for light on my skin, gleam in Child eyes & teeth, my pearls, strapped to her neck, pearls that take from Child my hint of a blush on my cheek, from my hand on Child, her leaning on my lap, so warm, flesh of my flesh – perhaps Pearl.
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If I could speak my voice would be the twist of this coral, branching and snapped. My voice would spill from a slit belly, a caviar of pearls.
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‘It hurts to admit – words fail me. Paint fails for me. Music works only as long as music lasts. The minute the score ends all the words and the paints that worked for me disappear. I am a lady of some standing.’ I tell all that to the child after I ask her if she can keep a secret and do not wait for her reply.
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I would tell you, lady, that all I have is secrets. Secrets lent to me by others – not leaning in, as you might to a friend, but absent – glazed. Speaking to someone I can’t see. A secret: the exact shade of my smile. Another, lost to the ocean’s rolling damask folds: my true name.
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The water behind us
Is the sea between us
The skin shades that separate us
The shared sex that binds us
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We wear a single set of pearls – your own
We know what it is to be passed between men
We sit in silence behind this frame
We are not at all the same
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I am a decorated shell
no one listens to
for me
save you
for that sea-sound
takes you back
where you are free
we are coral and pearls
taken
that won’t be put back in their current beds
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If I could speak I would call you
what would I call you
Ma’am
who would I call
Ma’am are you my
Ma’am now
If I could speak
who are you
mama
are you my mama now