“Even though your life spans overlap,
they’ll never quite line up,”
-John Koenig (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
It’s easier being my mothers friend
than it is to be her daughter. By this
I mean as her child I am never relieved
of living up to her vein prints. She gave
birth to me under a full moon and torn
Stratocumulus and I’ve been tiding away
from her since. She taught me indignant
symphonies, how to let sharp notes sing.
But all this is the wrong metaphor for her
She is a lunar singularity no daughter could
imitate, though I tried. A psalm to the body’s
ability to marble itself magnificent.
Her, a personified trochee hitting hard first
trying to be soft later. She climbed mountains
No, what I mean is she is a mountain.
I’ve spent years looking at her back learning
how to wield erosion like she did, rivers
carving a pieta in our flesh. It is any wonder
I’ve been mooncloud hungry my whole life?
Any wonder I’m expert at playing my bitter loud?
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