Birthday
by Miriam Åkervall
I dream the girl again, lashed to the stern
of a tractor. The number on her forehead,
the rope in her mother’s hands. I wake
in a glass sleeve of sweat. Words gather
at the heat like moths, or smokers warming
their hands in the night. I ask my mother
about the day I was born. She says, you were blue.
No, yellow. You had a fever. Or maybe
it was me. It made everything urgent.
of a tractor. The number on her forehead,
the rope in her mother’s hands. I wake
in a glass sleeve of sweat. Words gather
at the heat like moths, or smokers warming
their hands in the night. I ask my mother
about the day I was born. She says, you were blue.
No, yellow. You had a fever. Or maybe
it was me. It made everything urgent.
Miriam Åkervall
Miriam is a poet and a translator. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Black Warrior Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Their writing has received support from the Vermont Studio Center and the American Literary Translation Association. They live in Moscow, Idaho.