Little Knife
After Keorapetse Kgositsile
All childlike tenderness, and slender flesh
worked to a toughness like stone. Muscles
like rolling hills, scenes
Schumann could find
no solace in. We made sing the body, the way it
sings echoes, a past like whiplash to memory.
The griot says
that places have scars, which is to say
they echo the body, which I have since learned
is a feathered thing, not set free, but knowing not
the concept of a cage.
And that’s what love is,
in the end. You balanced me in your hands, called
me your little knife. You are the maker, and I
am beautifully wrought,
the blade that returns
home, in your stomach, opportune
like a thing portended.
