I attempt a visual representation of how my daughter and I interrelate. I choose pronouns as the unit of my expressions, a circle as their container. I cut blocks of pronouns into various shapes and jigsaw them together. I want the assembly of words to please my eye and to make sense. I trust the two things are connected.
She rises up into me. I am background, sky. She moves up and down in my space. We drift on a distant horizon. The image attracts, but I can’t feel it. I keep going. I draw my self into the poem. As I show(s) up on the page, everything changes. She becomes her. The relationship of subject to object inverts. How does I relate to her? Suddenly, self and other demand separate forms. I make her a frame and put my self inside it. How can I move within the fixed parameters of her? I reposition I at an angle.
Anne Riesenberg is an acupuncturist and meditation instructor in Portland, Maine. She is currently finishing an MFA in Creative Writing at Lesley University. Her first published essay appeared in Monkeybicycle in January 2015.
