You are not mine to keep. Though sometimes, in the quiet hum of bedtime, I forget that. I tuck you in like I’m sealing up the world.
By Elena Vale2 years ago in Poets
I was rocking my child to sleep when it hit me— I am someone’s baby, too. Somewhere, my mother remembers the weight of me in her arms,
There was a version of me before this. Before diapers and night feeds, before tiny shoes lined up by the door, before I learned how to pack a lunch
What if I’m not doing this right? I ask myself on the floor of the laundry room, halfway between mismatched socks and the guilt I carry like lint
You finally fell asleep— after the stories, the water, the bathroom trip you insisted you didn’t need until you did. After the wrong pajamas,
I hid in the bathroom today. Not to cry— though that came later. Just to breathe in a room where no one was saying my name
Last night you called me Mama. Like always. Like forever. But the sound was rounder, sharper somehow— as if your voice had swallowed a year
It wasn’t when you were born. Not when you first cried or curled like a question mark against my chest. It came later— quiet and unnoticed—
Gloves off in the rose beds, we kneel not in prayer but rebellion— trowels scraping against the neat borders they drew for us.
They said bring pies so we brought axes disguised as rolling pins our aprons starched white as surrender flags but tied too tight
Well intended, but uniformed Bo says this with gentle admonition For my loving blunder I will rearrange my life It’s enraging to think
By Aspen Marie 2 years ago in Poets
Click. Click. Click. The sound of wooden needles counting stitches like casualties in a quiet war. Wool unravels between fingers
