I Am Your Mother

Your children ask for their birth stories
and you sew a more dazzling quilt each time. 
You keep from them what it is to be a parent,
that you were overcome by birth's sea, that you 
were a whale on its back, quietly approving 
of life swimming through you, and your pelvis 
obliged with its long stretching, that you wanted
your soul to scream aloud I am your mother, 
but the blackness of fear kept you a hollow vessel. 
You keep from them that they open cedar chests
in the attic, letting out the heartache you folded in,
that you had to learn how to hold them and point out 
butterflies and fight the cold in any way you could, 
and it is only now that you are awake for the pain, 
and only now do you purposely breathe in the joy, 
watching their flower faces in a boat breaking water.