First Story

My mother said I was born angry.
She said I came out hungry, too, two
eyes like pinwheels spinning into nothing, spinning
empty fairground rides, tunnels of dark, tunnels
into the deep inside her, the deep
where I had clung when there was nothing left to fill me.

I came out small, too early, face pinched
like that of an old lady too world-weathered to cry.
I did not cry.

She held me in a blanket, swaddled, swallowed
whole. And we were hungry, she and I, and
the world was hungry too and she knew, she
knew the small and skinny precious thing I was
to her, yellow like gold, sharp like rain.

by A.J.