You want the crying girl      the one who kept walking
            into the ocean, salt pool larger and larger
                                                             around her neck.
Daisy crown in her fist, clump of sad weeds.

Vasilyssa, the wise, throws a comb behind her,
                               wakes a birch forest, keeps running.

Vasilyssa floats            into your dreams, waterlogged,
and pockets your hair in fistfuls.
                 You're a doll in her hand, hair and straw, slag.

Every childhood has a kitchen, a floor for dog scraps,
                                                an oven you can't touch.

Vasilyssa the brave enters Baba's house and sits down
at her table.                                                 Here she is

hysteric, the woman     cracking eggshells underwater 
until all the pieces float.                            She's lifting

 the egg up to your mouth               wet, slippery, born.