We decide, after all, that the brain is a collection,
A family of knots- those that center the roses
In a whimsy quilt, those that collapse to secure,
And some like a fist coiled in the brain. We decide
Memory is only this: the unwrapping the rewrapping
In one day of a knot. First the ears like a rabbit’s, then
The loop and squeeze. Remember how we tie the laces?
Now the pull it slips inside itself, reverses, yes like ageing-
How we never stay as we are made.
M. Clara White was named runner up in the RHINO Poetry Founder’s Prize Contest 2012 and subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize by that journal. You can also find her work in RHINO 2011, NAP Magazine, Eunoia Review, The Medulla Review, Specter, Petrichor Machine, Stymie Magazine.