Personal Mythologies | Michele Leavitt

I. Birth

Under the flowerless jacaranda tree,

my mother eats me

and throws my bones over the hedge.

Surrounded by clipped hibiscus,

she had made love with her father,

and the stories they needed

spilled beneath them. When rain freshens

parched dirt, old roots swell

with memories, and anything is possible –

me, a green slip of a girl,

made by a monster, in the image of a god.