MOTHERS DAY

Could not let the day go by without acknowledging where I truly came from. This first appeared in Issue 1 of the Harrow House Journal (June 2025)

A THANK YOU
Mother, this is what I
would tell you the next time
you visit me in my dreams :
I have carefully crafted an explanation
for why you placed me for adoption
why I assume you chose not
to hold me once I emerged
a person of your creation
from the womb you never
intended to use,  an appendage
you wanted so dearly to ignore.
I would tell you that I have decided
your decision was motivated not
because I would have been
an inconvenience, and also not
because you feared what your parents,
my grandparents now, would have said.
You did it because you believed
I would be better parented by a couple
who wanted the child that they
could not create, and you had
no way of knowing that they would
be torn apart by his death, I again
the child of a single mother but soon
for her to find a new husband,
to unwomb two of her own,
to become her once, her almost child.
You knew none of this, could not,
and so I mourn you, the mother
I never got to thank for allowing me
to finally discover who I was
for six decades, unable to see
what you carefully wrote
in the twisted helix of my being.