Dion O’Reilly

WHAT IT TOOK

It made sense flames licked my skin off
the year I turned twenty.

Made sense my life narrowed to growth of new skin,
grafted from scraps of my unburnt self.

Made sense that I looked at my claws, black as used matches,
saw only fingers waiting to re-wrap in skin.

It made sense my mother learned to journey
back and forth twice a day,

tortuous climb and steep descent through the coastal range
to a burn unit where I smelled like band aids and blood.

Her life became nothing but watching
the blue of my eyes roll into darkness. Nothing

but listening to the shudder of my teeth
as they bloodied the tip of my tongue.

I became her baby again, gauze wrapped, just my face visible,
neck vein tapped for morphine like an umbilical.

Each day, when she walked through the burn ward doors,
did she remember the night I emerged from her wet darkness

before she ever lifted my skin with a lunge whip?

She watched, hands folded, as my salts leaked out
from my unskinned back and legs. Watched

as the white-gowned nurses rushed to fill me
with whatever mineral my heart needed.

She watched the way mothers watch their babies—
till their eyes burn.