I am from the Origin


Sofia Carrera-Britten
BFA FAV 2023


I don’t trace the divisions, but the spaces they create (12)
I was shifting in and out of a dream where my six fingers were raised to the trees,
my mother in the bed above/beside me

I am an animal with animals teeming
(swirling, shaking, trembling)
inside of me

I am from the Oregon*

Corazón, cora, khora:
how you are          my heart
                                my friend
                                my land/space/place/countryside

“The myth of the faceless mother provides the very motivation for our exploitation of Earth, seen as ‘inexhaustible matter for things’”.
            —Timothy Morton, quoting Emmanuel Levinas
In a way, I am just a restatement of my mother.
In a way, I do not exist yet and in a way I have existed forever
(my mother has not existed forever, she’s like 52).

I keep saying in passing that I am nervous

For my birthday:

                                She came into your bedroom (1) and said it felt locked and I couldn’t tell how                                 close I was to her so I just traced a box around my clutched curled knees                             (think about it) and smiled.

I feel as though I know but when faced with the action I begin to doubt; a need for the cryptic and I become the mothman.

What light do I flock to?
alt: To what light do I flock? (2)

I did run to the window in my room when I noticed that salmon in the sky. You entered once and left and I made peace with a solitary (multiple) interaction of joy. (3) You came a second time and I, as in despite myself, still yearned to be your bride: the gauzy curtain between us and all.

The spiral staircase doesn’t scare me, but the thought of coming down it does.

I send emails to your friends at 11:52pm and wipe my piss on their bath towels in a moment of panic and inability to call out across the kitchen.

This one was really meant to be about me, I swear.

I swear.

I swear and it looks like a knot made from coiled white rope or strands of daisy grass and ripped (thus sealed) by two hands moving laterally:
they are together in their opposition.

At the same time I am becoming aware of my greatness, I am becoming aware of the greatness of all I have put aside for later and am now unearthing. Like pulling honeycomb teeth from itchy gums.
I love to scratch my itchy popcorn skin gums.

Maybe this is the problem.

Kira.

Purgatory.

I hope I meet your parents.

This is not a poem anymore (maybe it never was), it is just annotations, translations, and transcriptions.

[
                I cook myself bitter greens and shovel them down my throat as an act of love, the way I settle in the scratchy                 grass. It’s not so much that it looks greener, but that it seems fuller--bugless. I wonder if I picked a bad spot                 or if the swarm is everywhere, you just can’t see it until you’re in it**.

                I feed myself bitter greens like I kiss my right shoulder (will it taste different with ink?), but painful and
                necessary.

                I bought dandelion leaves for a dollar at Stop & Shop and I thought of Nicole. I was disappointed when my
                mouth didn’t pull back--when they were not bitter, but balanced.
]

I’m trying to understand why it didn’t hurt (the way I wanted it to).

I know I’m getting eaten right now
= [This is succinct in my head/body.]
but I keep rolling my body over land-borne, land-bred driftwood. I wonder if I am allergic to grass.

This is the hill where I pretended to almost crash. I’m realizing now I haven’t taken my Zoloft.

Maybe that’s why this pen and its blue ink will never end. It’s a metaphor, Betty.

I am realizing there is driftwood tied to my body. I wish it was heavier so I could have noticed it sooner.

I don’t know where I am and I’m aware that owning that dooms to a world of absentee ballots and a scarcity of road maps.

Indefinitely.

It is time now. I can tell. It is the time.

P.S. I do wish this grass was softer.
*pronounced “origin”
**Luke 17:21

(1): Not every you is you, but this one is.
(2): Alt: How has your week been? Who are you now?
(3): Kissing, or praying, where each hand is one of ours.




Mark