Concurrent Planning

by MEGAN SNYDER-CAMP

A belt becomes a snail becomes a beehive. 

Borrowed, borrowing, the burrowing owl 
I pretend she is in order to love 

how the child disappears my bracelet, 
my hair clip, winds whatever it is 

in yarn then tape. Wraps it binds it mothers it. 
The bundle glows as it comes alive.

At school she refuses to trace each kitten to its cat, 
each wheel to its car. When I go to my next house, she says, 

I’ll take this hat, this sticker. This is just where 
we are in time. Even you, my love, grow tired 

of my slow spelling out on our nightly Scrabble board.
Did I love her enough or did I take her up like work, 

a plan I had, a thirst. The system has a language,
tongued stone, a glazing over. What possessed me

to try to take this apart—you already are 
who you were when you survive this. 

Inside some animals, imaginal cells hold two layers of time at once.