Birth is When We Invent Ourselves

For a long time all I could do
was think of the ones I was before.

Some of them wanted me back.

There was more we meant to ask,
they said. Remember.

Not all of us are born upside-down.

I moved through the world
like someone in a strange hat.

Nonetheless, a hoop of light shook loose in me

while I sat at a table with my little needle,
air opening its uncountable mouths to the thread.

Who said, some come with the mark
of the drift on their feet? Like a slipstitch.

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