after “The Lightness of Bearing” by Virginia Maksymowicz

Her eyes follow

me as blank as the day she was born.

Come closer! Wax Wings cries, 

her feet firmly planted, swallowed in a lilac fabric. 

He will never know; the women do not fly —

The town’s laughter swirls around her, like cinnamon bread. 

The sour smell of day-old dough swimming

through braids anchored to the swell above a slender post

so straight and tall, she might be a column —

the challah is burning out above the pregnant horizon. 

Eerily rounding the sun he bellows, closer!

The tiny pads of her toes itch

for forbidden movement. Have willpower and bury them if needed. 

strike the thought, the women do not fly —

Feet devoured by fertile earth she dreams to rip the roots, rise with the weight of womanhood

and run through air smelling of ripe fig, luscious and pulsing with possibility

but as foolish Icarus’ sun explodes, she bears the baby called Burden,

his eyes blank, but at least male. She sometimes hopes for a girl, though selfishly.

Her pale skin turned the burnt tone of terracotta

and her second head of matching shade, a swollen bowl

preserved.