Mute Swan

Photo by Mark Timberlake on Unsplash

I tested many possible doors
to other worlds as a girl:

The brambles by the elementary school wall.
A line of cygnets trailing near the algae.
Parentheses. Then, I discovered sex.

I made a potion supposed
to let me cross into the body
of a swan. The doctor said
don’t worry kids play all the time
after she pumped my stomach.

This world is pressed against all the others
like hot sweat caught in wiry stomach hair.
Doors nested tongues inside bright beaks.

In the stories the boy becomes a swan.
This was supposed to be a punishment.
I ignored that part. I dreamed
of molting glossy feathers.
I believed if I changed my body
I could gain passage into a better world.

The doors were fine. The sex was fine.
The thing about transfiguration
is that it requires both faith and will.

To cross over one must first touch the knob
and find it gives below fingers
soft and heaving like a tongue.

The operations fantasy allows on a body:
The world of no lactation.
The world of orange bill.
The world of first fall dust
gray, mostly white plumage by November.