king nuada's hand

build me back silver. 
do i want to be whole?
i have been losing
limbs since i was a sunflower seed. 
in the myth of the tuatha dé danann,
nuada is the first king of the gods. to be a king
means to be whole & thus 
when he loses his arm he loses 
everything. i am thinking of 
my crashed car on the side 
of the highway. the new york city streets
in the morning wet with fire. 
the year without teeth where 
all i ate were phone calls & 
the light from the walmart parking lot.
my arm in buried in the cemetery
by the house in fleetwood. 
i was never nuada though. 
my absences, more knotted than 
an arm. how do you build back
when so much is lost? is it lost
or transformed? i am thinking
of the parable of the ship. if you
replace the whole body, is it the same ship?
talking to my sibling, they tell me again
how they have not come out to their best friend
from grade school. two ships in the creek. 
i try to tell them that they have
both changed. i wonder if it is 
the silver selves or the severed selves 
who talk to one another.
if you forage a new arm, are you
still the king? the story says, "yes."
from silver, dian cécht & credne
heal nuada's wounds & forge his new hand. 
i want to know though, does nuada 
remove his arm at night? in those brief moments
is he no longer king? does a leader always
need to be whole? the older i get the less
i am hungry for it myself. i keep
closets of arms & legs & hair.
none of them silver. nuada's arm
eventually grows back as flesh.
maybe it is a story of sewing. of how
our parts return changed too. 
not two ships or one. a thousand 
in the clouds where the gods still sleep.