Page 18 of Styx
about this particular birth.
I walked into my mother’s rooms
and found all my aunts
and even some of my cousins there.
When the first child of three
we pulled from her womb
was a girl, something
deep within my bones
understood that everything
was about to change.
A Shift
I noticed it first in my aunts.
How they looked at me strangely.
No one ever knows that they’re different
until someone makes them feel it.
With the birth of each of my sisters,
vivid-eyed and bronze-skinned
like my mother and aunts,
I sensed how disparate I was.
Even my sisters born with tails or wings
wore them so prettily that my aunts spoke
of their soft beauty, a compliment
that was never paid to me.
As my many sisters grew, I found myself
more alone than ever.
They were born in schools,
inseparable from one another,
always on the riverbanks
together. I wished that I too
was born with another
