Portia

Their words came all day and night,
soft and sinuous as whiskey.
A gentle hammering while I cocooned
into a porcelain doll. It’s useless
to say our hands are made of china,
what with their faint pink cast.
I once found a silver filigree necklace
in the spaces of my chipped teeth.
In the parlor all the records skip,
their tiny hairline fissures. My brother
slithers through the crawlspace, past
snakes in dust dresses, the bones
of a small mouse. We tie doll shoes
on wire hangers, our parents’ screams
traveling the ashen throats of chimneys.
Trembling the cobwebs that embroider
our mouths. We open the gilded music box
and find the sea. Cup our hands beneath it,
murmuring. Shushing each other, our mother’s
eyes in our hearts, we dare not speak
of ache. Of hunger.
Ever.