In the afterlife the first face I see is my mother’s.
Every mother is the boatman, having once been the boat.

She waits for me in the Laundromat we used to spend
every Sunday in. Our bodies have always belonged

to each other. I found this embarrassing, the way
she wouldn’t cede ownership of me, and all the kisses

she told me I owed her, the tickling she wouldn’t stop,
even when I asked. But now I don’t want to forgive.

I want ecstasy. So it’s easy to give my mother my hand,
let her lead me from the smell of dryer sheets to the edge

of the water, let her lift me into the boat. I’m frightened
so I place her big warm hands on my face. I touch her

long lovely neck, and I realize it is my neck. And her
breasts are my breasts, and her eyes, her eyes!—glittering

with the inhuman milk of heaven—are mine. Each
each other’s animal again, we lift our hand to shade

our eye from the approaching corona. I can feel
the perfect wound that made us. And it is God.