Poetry

plowing her grief into what she knew best / blessing the dirt in the seams of her hands

My toddler son tells me he will stop getting older by lying still

leaves preparing for winter leaving, crepuscular, desiccated, dust to dust, my mother, my fat grandmother, me.

I am a second-hand / kiddie harp, cherrywood tarnished / with elven fingerprints

I found myself wondering / what kind of person / doesn’t spell-check a death threat

She tells me she will become / an astronaut, live in the stars. I cannot answer her / when she asks if I too will go.

She / emerges, relieved and smiling. She is // blooming into the season of death

He says go up in skies, a spell for us.

How mistaken we were / about what mothering means.

nothing was ever / enough, not the way I loved her, or later, the way I changed the way I / loved her.

Was your face veiled, your belly tethered, / your cry unslapped? You are only questions.