Poetry

Ma, it’s spooky how my whole body fit in your whole body / and now my body builds another

so long I thought / she did not love me with her body

He hasn’t yet learned / relationships are lessons in becoming more alone.

I will call all my pieces back / crease their bright blue into / a book as a pressed wildflower

good moms will raise kids who are / confident, the kind who try new things / without being afraid to fail because, to them, / failing is just falling

in all her sepia glory she’d know her lost tongue, / where her people came from, her way back home

you must be a parent, barely / escaping ruin. Are you hurt, / little wife?

my womb, like a bruised pear, / shrank

My past is printed on glossy paper. Flat, / with only memory to inflate it.

Mom says / pretty is as pretty does. / What she means is: I can’t / bear to be without you.

Anatomy of rose & hydrangea, / unpresent; / the expectant carpel & stamen, / unmet.