She believes she is travelling
She believes she is travelling
for Emily Kunzeman
You were born under a moon shaped like a rabbit.
Incredibly, the world turned backwards.
In the small fur coat the body begins
its movements. Only indicator
a pale ribbon. The moon’s still out
above us. We’re waking up one
train journey at a time.
Covering the walls in drawings of birds.
Now we’re not sure if it was girl
with rabbit, or rabbit with girl.
A moon shaped like a moon is shining
over your adopted country.
The afternoon is a pink velvet curtain:
on this side we’re hiding in our tutus and hard
shoes. We’re still children.
There’s still a rabbit in the moon.
Later today we’ll have to get on the train
that runs through the gap in the curtains.
We’ll go through the fields of poppies and rapeseed.
That’s why we developed this dialect no one understands.
We’ll slip through.
We’ll fill up our suitcases with old paper
that doesn’t mean anything and fool
the border guard. At night
we can plot birds’ migration and
floral growth. Write characters
in deliberately misleading ways, lie
on our residency applications.
The constellations we built tell us fortunes
we want to hear. Far off, there’s a storm.
The inside of the train car is painted
with a summer sky.
We’re off now, rabbit. We’re off now, girl.
Somewhere the border is shimmering.
Proof of birth? Proof
of citizenship?
We’re ready. We have them
to hand. The drawing of the moon
and the small fur coat.
The field of poppies
turning yellow.
The night sky we made ourselves.
Éireann Lorsung is the author of Music For Landing Planes By (Milkweed 2007), Her Book (Milkweed 2013), and Sweetbriar (dancing girl press, 2013). Other work appears or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, the Burnside Review, the Colorado Review, Women's Studies Quarterly, Two Serious Ladies, The Collagist, and Bluestem. She edits 111O and co-runs MIEL, a micropress.
