other underworlds 

i dig my own underworlds 
wherever i go. a place to keep the truth
to dry like bouquets hung by
their toes. when i was a girl 
a boy was trying to eat me. he handed me
a shovel & took me out by the apricot tree.
i do not have good judgement. i dug.
earth & stones & alphabets until
we reached his underworld. 
it was where he stored his desire 
to be a ruler. i crawled inside because
he told me i looked nice there. i waited.
the moon died over & over leaving 
her exoskeleton. his underworld
had holes in the walls. it smelled
of black licorice & mildew. he talked 
to me like a fortune teller machine.
"will i have a son?" "will you ever
be happy?" i escaped when he wasn't looking.
shot my gender full of holes. told him,
"oh no... i guess we can't." i am a master
of escapes. the window & the trap door.
i built my first underworld 
when he was gone. i laughed in 
the mud. it was march & the soil
was still cold. grass roots snapped & tossed.
down there i laid down & wept. i dreamed
the place velvet & then moss. i wrote
a poem about my father on the walls.
imagined dragging him there. locking the door.
concluded it would not save us & so 
i just formed a bird from clay & breathed 
life into her. she kept my secrets. we all need
someone to keep our secrets, if not 
they start to turn into ghosts that follow you
into the purple night. i discovered i could
not have just one. an underworld 
beneath the house & one by the mailbox
& another on the side of the road where
the foxes go to plot. the digging & the darkness.
sometimes they connect to one another.
my bird, flying between. her eyes made
from pennies. when you ask me,
"where did you?" on a hot afternoon & there is
dirt on my hands. it was an underworld.
how do i stop? did he, that boy who buried me,
did he ever stop? i make an underworld just for
my grief. it is smooth & tender like a throat.
i wake you up, about to take you there.
i get nervous at the last minute so i 
concoct a lie. i tell you i just wanted to see
the moon crack herself open & crawl free. 
we watch. the trees glow in her light.