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.