<\/p>\n
My mother always took us out in the rain,
\nsky large and ominous as a history
\nselected by men who\u2019ve never heard
\nof our town. Lightning a password
\ninto a natural fury, my mother
\ndid not hold us in the wind, though
\nsome of us were young enough
\nto straddle her hip, hands in her hair.<\/p>\n
A Bradford pear we climbed
\nevery afternoon that summer, when
\nthe air pressed in on the lungs
\nand our skin was damp with
\nmorning, broke at the trunk,
\nknocked teeth out from the privacy fence
\nbetween our house and the house of strangers.
\nThe force blew the door open, an invitation.<\/p>\n
Our shirts wet and clinging like a stain,
\nour hair curling in youth and water,
\neach storm was a sermon; we sat quietly in it,
\nforbidden from fidgeting. All I remember
\nis how she never looked at any of us.
\nAll I remember is how she looked up.<\/p>\n
Nurse, let me hold her without wires,
\nwithout the tangle of alert,
\nthe spider web to trap her living,<\/p>\n
let me slip my hands beneath
\nher to lift her up a moment.<\/p>\n
Each week doctors dot her descent
\nalong the arch of growth chart,
\nmy infant Persephone, I borrow
\nher from the other side.<\/p>\n
She isn\u2019t a percentile, she\u2019s born
\nbelow. Turns blue as seawater,
\nnormal for her kind, moon given
\nmoon taken.<\/p>\n
Nurse, show me what seizure looks like,
\nwhat to call out when her eyes see past me
\nto look at the far fields a newborn should
\nnever know<\/p>\n
show me how to lure a body back
\nwith her mother\u2019s breath.<\/p>\n
In the conversation, a mother has lost
\nher child, baby\u2019s jaw clenched against
\nbreath. The mother says the child\u2019s name
\nlike an old calendar, which days
\nhas she circled? Questions in the interview,
\nincantations against repeating her loss.
\nI will never do anything she did.
\nEvery death is a mother\u2019s fault,
\nso I will hold you long hours before
\nthe surgeon\u2019s knife comes for you.<\/p>\n
You didn\u2019t know you were growing all wrong,
\nveins stretching toward lungs, anatomy
\nfinger-painted to work close to right.
\nYou sleep and heave for air, too tired
\nto be greedy, to grasp like a hand
\nover hand up a rope. As frayed, as tender.<\/p>\n
When I take you to the surgeon,
\nmy Moses baby in the bulrushes,
\nmy Snow White to her woodsman,
\nI will place you in his kind arms.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We stay inside when it is storming. My mother always took us out in the rain, sky large and ominous as a history selected by men who\u2019ve never heard of our town. Lightning a password into a natural fury, my mother did not hold us in the wind, though some of us were young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8422,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1269\/revisions\/1322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}