I call you before
I call you sweet
I call you bone-milk teat
I call you myself

I call you cilia
I call you stars
I call you harm
I call you fangs break through gums

I call you regret
I call you unavoidable because you were,
    unthinkable until you became
I call you pomegranate split open
    with bloody jewel fingers
    time out of mind

I call you myself: what such thing?
I call you back through the moon,
    the cricket nights and cicada days
I call you noxious because you exist,
    innocuous because you were birthed
I call you nox, darkness of making and unmaking

I call you green, seeker of light
    without which no one can be born
I call you the split of cell or stall, oil and water,
    without which not one thing could be
I call you the breath to take
    around which all bodies move and heave

I call you succulent devourer, death
I call you life loves life, cannot choose but to live
I call you what is born must die
   that ineffable takes its place in this thread of days
Harm-taken, beauty-given—
I call you now, before