Moon
You’d floated in your mother seven months
that day she lifted her blouse, washed her stomach
in the silver light of the television,
whispered, Look, little pigeon,
we have landed on the moon. Now you play it over
and over in your mind: your parents
following those distended voices,
watching that one underwater step,
until she goes luminous
with you against the screen, and he kneels,
puts his mouth over her rounding navel,
circles his arm around her thigh.
This is how you became one of us
born without a moon, with a stone
lit in the distant inside.
