Origin Story by Hannah Levy

"My mother was a rabbit under trembling sky. My father was the sky."

Origin Story
by Hannah Levy

after Wo Chan

My mother was a rabbit under trembling sky. My father was the sky.
Not the sky, a storm. He boomed across the pasture of her body, split
the horizon with bright teeth and called it love. I was born between
that burrow of longing and lightning, eyes rain-wet and wide. Slept
with one ear pressed to thunder, my heart a molting metronome.
My mother folded the day into squares, hid her sugar by the pound.
She taught me to speak without speaking, to mistake myself
for stone. In the dark, my copper tongue cut itself on weathered wood,
carving the sign for stay and the sign for run. My father rolled on,
silver cumulonimbus clotting the grass. I’m grown now, gathering
the torn light of my limbs. I’m the open field with nowhere to hide.

First published in Ink & Marrow (Issue 12).