Breaking Water

Since much grows in mud, not in spite of mud,
        	I'm making a life out of my little failures.

Stepmom has something hopeful about it,
        	but although I'm a step, I don't think I'm a mom.
                    	I did buy into the therapist's advice, to think

of myself as a bonus mom. Bonus as in optional, right, like in a quiz?
        	I always give extra items to make sure
        	        	the kids do good. They say I'm an easy A.

My biology was the topic, when the therapist
        	asked what about you. I said there are enough
                    	things to birth and mother in this world. My task since  

was to let myself believe it. First step: give a hundred dollars
        	a month for drinking water in Africa, because
                    	the charity's millennial founder said water  

is the only binary thing left in the world and I fell in love
        	with this idea. How else to get clear choices,
        	        	but to measure what is potable or not. If some grieved

the village girls who so bereft took their lives
        	after dropping the water jars miles from their homes,
                    	it was their mothers I couldn't forget,

having lost what's precious twice.
        	I must have been feeling the opposite, a grief
                    	for what didn't exist. If I cannot name what's lost

how can I emerge from mourning?  When I see the village
        	cut the ribbon to a new water well I let myself be rinsed
                    	 in their unambiguous joy.