Letting Go

I stand on river’s edge

tossing old sticks into
the churning water
throwing my mother’s skeleton

I take her body apart

bone by bone
I take what hurt me first
and wear the mask of her pelvic curves
I hurl her jaws her feet
her eye sockets her hand bones
so numerous in their precision of slapping

I heave all this structure

far into the churning blue
& opening my mouth wide
my hands clench
and then splay