A.E. Abitz
Mom, Tell Me
of your shelved forfeits, things caged away
or lost. Tell me how time was never right—
how you wished to see the world, but daddy
made your choices. Tell me you wanted
kids, guessed nurture called so resolved
to nurse. Tell me how harsh nights and heavy
shifts, scooping patients pricking sons
colored twenty years, and you forgot to want.
Until rooms finally emptied, and you
shook loose memory of free spirit,
wild ocean winds in your hair. Tell me
how you remember the beginning—
lustful letters and honeyed grapefruit—
that bitter pink of possibility.
Return to Motherhood’s Duality Folio
A.E. Abitz is a poet born in Guam and raised in various US cities. Her writing has appeared in Poets.org, The Dewdrop, Union Spring Literary Review, Fork Apple Press, and elsewhere. Her work has received support from the Academy of American Poets, the Writers’ Room of Boston, EVVY, and GBH Media. Abitz is a graduate of the MFA program in poetry at Emerson. She is Co-Managing Editor of West Trade Review. Find her at aeabitz.com.