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patterns on water
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Poetry | January/February 2022

Lines of Communication

By Sue Scavo

[Daughter :: Mother]

She says, “But I already apologized.” I say, “Did you?” I am not sure she
understands. I am sure I do not either. With my mother, nothing was ever
enough, not the way I loved her, or later, the way I changed the way I
loved her. [From afar.] I am sure I do not know how to be mother to this
daughter, even now, in this moment when she is old enough to leave. Even
as she is leaving. Maybe this is why I don’t feel her apology; she is
unapologetic. Even in the how of her leaving, which is to say that she
leaves and returns, leaves and returns. Loves me closely, then from afar.
Sometimes many times in one day. Weeks of this. Months. Starting the
moment she slipped [reluctantly] out of me. Will my body never be done.

1 reply on “Lines of Communication”

Catiesays:
February 15, 2022 at 9:08 am

I very much like this, though as a mother of someone so young, not yet ready to think this.

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