Words
Poem of the Week
motherhood: another sort
A child in the garden—
sunlight, certainly,
a border of begonias
(or snapdragons, it does not matter)
a blue tricycle on its side—
and a mother in the upstairs bedroom,
the curtains drawn,
damp cloth across her forehead
an empty glass—
remnants of gin, sharp scent
of pine (forests recalled, forgotten)
filling the room.
Migraines, melancholy, malaise;
all the words taste foreign
something bitter at the back of the throat.
It is simpler to see:
bedsheets rumpled, in need
of airing
cigarette stubbed out, left
on bedside table where it once burned
her body curled, bent
into itself, around nothing—
only the blessed empty landscape
of the bed, the darkness,
the quiet.
While outside—
the sun loud on the grass
hard on the eyes,
hot on a small arch, lifted
running.