Cease, CowsMother’s Day Issue

May 2018

Editor | Susannah Jordan

Authors retain all rights and copyright to their works. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express

permission from the authors.

Cover Image

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division: George Grantham Bain Collection.“East Side Babies” [between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915]. Digital image.

Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

Contents

Shark | 11

Abigail Pearson is a 22-year-old queer writer of novels and poetry. She has a black cat that she loves to cuddle with as she drinks tea and reads Dostoyevsky. Abigail has published poetry collections and short stories, including her latest work, A Mad Woman’s Voice (https://payhip.com/b/A47O).She resides in Eugene, OR.

Omen | 12

Kerry Campion de Santiago is an English teacher from Belfast, Northern Ireland. She writes short stories and poetry and is currently editing her first novel. She lives in Valladolid, Spain with her husband.

Yet Somehow Still There | 14

Claire Peasegood is a full time working mum. She is the Head of English in a secondary school in Barnsley. She has been teaching English for 14 years and has always loved reading, studying, teaching and, more re-cently, writing poetry; particularly when going through a difficult time. She lives in Yorkshire with her hus-band, their 7 year old daughter, and their little border terrier.

Miscarriage with My Mother | 16

Jacqueline Kirkpatrick is a writer from Albany, NY. She has been published in The Rumpus, Creative Nonfiction, and Thought Catalog. Recently, her piece “The New Unnatural,” was published in Nasty! - a collection of work by female writers with all proceeds going to Planned Parenthood. You can follow her on IG: @thebeatenpoet or jacquelinekirkpatrick.com.

Fear Is a Walk Through Immovable Trees | 18

Linda Dove holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature and teaches college writing. She is also an award-winning poet, and her books include, In Defense of Objects (2009), O Dear Deer, (2011), This Too (2017), and the scholarly collection of essays, Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain (2000). Poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, and she is editor of the online literary magazine, Moria. She lives with her human family, two Jack Russell terriers, and three backyard chickens in the foothills of Los Angeles.

this golden age | 20

Allie Marini is a cross-genre writer holding degrees from both Antioch University of Los Angeles & New College of Florida. She was a 2018 Shitty Women in Literature nominee, and has been a finalist for Best of the Net and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her masthead credits include Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, and Mojave River Review. She has published a number of chapbooks, including Pictures from the Center of The Universe (Paper Nautilus, winner of the Vella Prize) and Southern Cryptozoology: A Field Guide to Beasts of the Southern Wild (Hyacinth Girl Press, finalist for the SFPA’s Elgin Award) In addition to her work on the page, Allie was a member of Oakland’s 2017 National Slam Team. A native Floridian now freezing to death in the Bay Area, Allie writes poetry, fiction, and essays. Find her online: www.alliemarini.com

Eighth Month Swelter | 21

Caroljean Gavin started her MFA at The New School and finished it up at Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in the 2011 Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, The Ampersand Review, and Winston-Salem, NC’s Poetry in Plain Sight. She is currently working on a novel, a story collection, and on becoming a librarian.

The whistle is missing from my life jacket | 22

Victoria Richards is a journalist and writer. In 2017/18 she was highly commended in the Bridport Prize, came third in The London Magazine short story competition and second in the TSS flash fiction competition. She was also shortlisted in the Lucy Cavendish Prize 2018 and longlisted in the Bath Short Story Award and the National Poetry Competition.

Born Crying Sparkles, & Other Girl-Myths | 23

Audrey T. Carroll is a Queens, NYC native currently pursuing her English PhD at the University of Rhode Island. Her obsessions include kittens, coffee, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Fiction International, The Fem, Luna Luna, and others. Queen of Pentacles, her debut poetry collection, is available from Choose the Sword Press. She can be found at http://audreytcarrollwrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter.

The Motherless Queen Mother Speaks | 24

Jen Rouse’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Poet Lore, Midwestern Gothic, Wicked Alice, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, Yes Poetry, Crab Fat Magazine, Up the Staircase, and elsewhere. She was named a finalist for the Mississippi Review 2018 Prize Issue and was the winner of the 2017 Gulf Stream Summer Contest Issue. Rouse’s chapbook, Acid and Tender, was published in 2016 by Headmistress Press. Find her at jen-rouse.com and on Twitter @jrouse.

Emilia | 25

Eileen Chong is a Sydney poet who was born in Singapore. She is the author of six books, the latest being Rainforest from Pitt Street Poetry. Her work has shortlisted for the Anne Elder Award, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and twice for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Find her online: www.eileenchong.com.au

A Tribute to Pumping | 26

Eloísa Pérez-Lozano writes poems and essays about Mexican-American identity, motherhood, and women’s issues. She graduated from Iowa State University with a B.S. in psychology and an M.S. in journalism and mass communications. A 2016 Sundress Publications Best of the Net nominee, her work has been featured in The Texas Observer, Houston Chronicle, and Poets Reading the News, among others. She lives with her family in Houston, Texas.

Night Sounds (1/81) | 28

Judith Rodgers is a writer of poetry and plays. When she is not creating she teaches surgical nursing in North Texas.

The Full Night | 30

Syche Phillips’ fiction has appeared in Burnt Pine Magazine, The Penmen Review, Mused, Mash Stories, Synaesthesia Magazine, and more. Her short plays have been produced around the San Francisco Bay Area. She lives two blocks from the beach with her awesome husband and two cute kids, works at a theatre company, and blogs at sychela.com.

Handmade | 32

Amy Alexander is a poet and mother of a son and daughter. She live with her husband and children in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her writing has appeared in many journals, including Quarterly West, The Coil, and The Cream City Review. Her birth art has been featured at the Baton Rouge Gallery, and she has also led birth art workshops for expectant and new mothers. Her artwork can be found throughout this issue.

A Turtle Carries its Home On Its Back | 34

Jacquelyn Bengfort was born in North Dakota, educated at the U.S. Naval Academy and Oxford University, and now resides in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Gargoyle, Storm Cellar, District Lines, matchbook, CHEAP POP, The Fem, Jellyfish Review, and numerous anthologies, among other places. She was a finalist for SmokeLong Quarterly’s 2017 Kathy Fish Fellowship and The Iowa Review’s 2016 Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award for Veterans, and currently holds a poetry fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Find her online at www.JaciB.com.

Long Arms | 36

Maureen Langloss is a lawyer-turned-writer living in New York City. She serves as the Flash Fiction Editor at Split Lip Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Pithead Chapel, Sonora Review, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. In 2017, her work was nominated for Best of the Net and was a finalist in the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Contest, as well as the Gigantic Sequins Flash Fiction Contest. Find her online at maureenlangloss.com or on Twitter @maureenlangloss.

In the Garden | 40

Beatriz “Bea” Alamo (pronounced BAY-ah) is an illustrator & writer from St. Augustine, FL. She received a B.F.A in Illustration with a minor in Creative Writing from Savannah College of Art & Design in March 2015. Currently, she is an art instructor for children, ages ranging from four years to twelve and older, but hopes to write & illustrate her own book one day. You can find her personal work at www.beaalamo.com.

A Colleague Says I Can’t Be A Good Teacher | 42

Emma Bolden is the author of House Is An Enigma (forthcoming from Southeast Missouri State UP), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press, 2016), and Maleficae (GenPop Books, 2013). The recipient of a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA, her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, the Indiana Review, Shenandoah, the Greensboro Review, and The Journal. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly.

Image Credits

Laborynth | 17

Amy Alexander

Waiting to Inhale | 29

Amy Alexander

Farmer’s wife, ironing in the kitchen | 35

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Farmer’s wife, ironing in kitchen.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1860 - 1920. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-ad88-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

The Bridge | 39

Amy Alexander

Howl | 45

Amy Alexander

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Shark | Abigail Pearson

In my dreams I am a shark Long in bodySleek in mindA fin gracing the ocean A predator-

My third eye tells me I am notI am most like a motherWarm and soft and comfortingI don’t mind the illusion I just mind this body of mine-

The empty womb that mocks meBlood tinted water Another moon passing me by I am holding myself together with twineWatching hopes break upon the shore.

Omen | Kerry Campion de Santiago

We cradle a palmful of little black seeds. I expect them to jump - like fleas. But they stay flat; dead.

They clot together in a bulbous mass like a tumour, sticky and clumpy in our damp hands.

We scrape them off - and watch as they plummet to their glass coffin. We dump some soil on top: burying them alive.

After a month their tendrils, their spindly little limbs, remain unsprouted. Their soft heads uncrowned. They need moisture

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So you cloister their world in cellophane to make it rain inside. You’ve covered the mouth of their universe which gapes open like a moon.

I’m reminded of a child with a plastic bag over its head frantically gulping - I feel my stomach for kicks.

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Yet Somehow Still There | Claire Peasegood

I’ll never forget itLying down on the scanning chairTummy full of nervous anticipationAnd what I’d hoped was life, love, my baby bear.

The cold gel, the pressureFollowed by the earth shattering silenceThat’s so loud it bursts your eardrumsThen the inevitable…Those three words…“I’m so sorry…”More silence.Then three more…“There’s no heartbeat.”

A flood of emotions:Anguish, Denial, Despair.

Emptiness.

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The instinctive protective hand to my tummyTo comfort the child I had grown to love and make plans forBefore the cold, unwelcome, horrifying realisation thatHe’s gone. Yet somehow still there.For now at least. Before the long and painful farewellAnd the emptiness that nothing can fill.

Yet somehow still there,Inside my heart forever,Goodnight little one.Always know that you are loved.

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Miscarriage with My Mother | Jacqueline Kirkpatrick

A mobile overheadclowns on tricyclessmiling

I squeeze her fingers in mineI apologize when I hear her knuckles crack

She tears up says she loves meholds me gently

Ten hours listening to a pulse that only whispers my name

She sits beside mereading aloudDon Quixote

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17

Laborynth | Amy Alexander

Fear Is a Walk Through Immovable Trees | Linda Dove at the botanic garden, Claremont, California

It is the wolf with the yellow wingin its eye. No.It is more like a blister of sap, pinecones blown acrossthe garden. In the grove,the oaks don’t lose their leavesand can’t be moved by law. Instead, it turns its attentionto the brevifolia, the brief leaves of the Joshua Trees that bend to the ground like we do to read the signs—or, maybe, like time does. Time is relative here. It has no use for us. It will turn down our words, having others. In this fairytalegarden, it reminds usof the fairytale childwe almost had. She was goingbefore she arrived, when

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we would have named herafter a tree—Rowan,Willow,Fern.She is the ghost we might see in the water if we pass by a pool,where we might want to assume a bottomsince some depths echo the unstarred sky.But back to the wolf, visiting today in the gardens,standing at the edge of everything—like the wolf, it is always a matter of degree.It is the paws staked in the dirt,and the snow-blind coat,and also the eyethat moves under water like a gold coin.

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this golden age | Allie Marini

pregnancy, like one of the Dutch Masters, rendered me as a still life on canvas:with strokes in dry brush, a spinster’s silhouetteunmarred by distended belliesor mother’s milk.

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Eighth Month Swelter | Caroljean Gavin

Backyard dogs bark at lightning bugs.Closed windows do nothing.My bed is my aching island,Kicked off, wadded up blankets bluff the edge, still,Heat rises, rises, rises off my skin,And the ceiling fan blows it back down in.Even the son inside is restlessRolling and rippling,Tossing and turning,Swearing and sobbing.Even he can feel the devil hanging in the humidity.We are being patient.We are waiting, waiting, waiting forThat cool hand to deliver us from summer.

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The whistle is missing from my life jacket | Victoria Richards

When he is born he is piscine slippery, grey and unearthly.Black-button eyes frozen by shock-sudden roaring, suckerfishcaught in dull, red slip-stream. He ducks and slaps, blows bubbles, panic-pulls blue cord that binds and breaks usand I can’t believe he’s here. Is he okay? Is he breathing? I rest my head against the rim and wait for someone to shout – man overboard –

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Born Crying Sparkles, & Other Girl-Myths | Audrey T. Carroll

I started carving a place for you in this world before confirmation of your existence, before the dream where we giggled & played on the floor as the sunlight blessed us bothin softness, before a black & white screen endorsed your girl-hood. Carving is necessary when the mold is built one-size, no customization conceded, like hand-me-down socks with heartscuffing the ankles, & I knew—whoever you were—I wanted youto be able to sport tutus while inventing stories with dinosaurs because I was allowed one, my brother the other, & it nearly strangled the life out of us both even with my still-surviving pink obsession & love of florals (because the combat boots & AC/DC were never invited out to play, didn’t exist, locked away in a corner rust-haven of a closet where the scraps that didn’t fit the template were sent until they accepted theirirrelevance). I sharpen my tongue in anticipation of every ill-advised decree that you should be offered tiaras & pointe shoes only (that lightsabers are for boys, that girls don’t like science & should go, regardless of interest, paint a rose instead) because I heard that every time, because I know the asphyxiaof forced-upon lace, of ruffles coiling like cobras around child- sized ribs,

& I will always let you choose.23

The Motherless Queen Mother Speaks | Jen Rouse

She is my daughter I am not your daughter

She reflects my submerged emotionslike distortions in molten glass You cradle my suffering in the belly of each full embrace

She split from me like a hive in spring I was and will never be yours to split from

She will never let me go You must let me go

She belongs to a lineage of complicated queens and I belong to no one

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Emilia | Eileen Chong

The babies made me invincible. Invincible, Maggie Smith

Her eyes (still grey, blue, and green) searchmine out. I meet her gaze, then hold her.

She bobs her head at me, and I lower minein return. Our foreheads meet and cleave.

I tilt her backwards, my hand cradling her neck,then lift her towards me, and tilt her again.

She clings to me—freedom and safety,safety and freedom. It is a game she knows,

and she smiles, and smiles. Her laughter, a talisman; her eyes, a ward. She sees me,

and so I exist. I am here, and I suffer.Soon she will go, and my love with her.

I wake to the smell of milk. The hungrymouth. The animal grip of her clenched fists.

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A Tribute to Pumping | Eloísa Pérez-Lozano

I resist and resent you at firstyour plastic parts and tubesyour motor that provides the motion picture soundtrackof milky metronome tomy 20-minute movie thrice a day.

Your suction is less subtle thanmy son’s enthusiastic gulpsyour mechanic tugs do their jobwithout hormones or emotionas milk collects, drop by dropa means to a motherly end.

A sign of three meager months a leave deemed generous herebut seen as a pathetic pittanceelsewhere, barely enough time to take in the smiles and laughterjust starting to fill my senses.

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Ever so slowly, your sucking becomes soothing to my ears, rhythmic reminders to sit stillin the midst of work’s whirlwindsinvitations to breathe, read, writemy words and thoughts untouched.

You give me time with mecreative space to flesh out ideaspoems put on hold, ready to spill forth, taking shapewhen you render meinaccessible to all outside.

No longer an annoying daily choreI clean your parts with caretaking my time to rinse them gentlyas I realize that through this routinethe mom and poet in me rejoicesimultaneously safe from sacrifice.

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Night Sounds (1/81) | Judith Rodgers

I wake to the sounds of night.The gentle, old dog snores softly in the corner.My husband breathes the heavy, regular soundsOf sleep at my shoulder.A car moves slowly past outsideWith the splash of last night’s rain.I rise quietly and pad through the ancient, creaking houseTo where the twins lay sleeping.One child murmurs and turns himself over.Within me, another child rolls, wriggles, kicks,Then quietens,Waiting silently for the time when she, too,May breathe gently into the night.

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29Waiting to Inhale | Amy Alexander

The Full Night | Syche Phillips

I should sing the praises of the easy nights– The kid sleeps 7 to 7,Splayed in 70 different positions.His pursed lips breathe easily, softly,Starfish hands open and close,Searching, in sleep, for Legos, for blankets, and apple juice,Or maybe, for things out of reach during the day:The blinds, our phones, the coffee maker.He sleeps face up, legs spread, arms outreached,Looking longer than I could ever imagine he’d be at 1 year, 23 months.Or he sleeps on his stomach,Cute rump in the air, hands fisted in blankets.Or he sleeps on his side, using a lovey as a pillow,Small fists up as if playing air violin.However he sleeps,He sleeps well, and deeply,And I’ve gotten spoiled by these 12-hour stretchesWhere I can trust he’s safe and secure.I should sing the praises of these nights—Of standing over him in the light spilling from the hallwayWhile I stoke his palm and will it to close reflexively on my finger,

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Or brush back the dream-damp curls from his forehead.I touch him unrestrainedly because I trust he will sleep through it.My little sleeping beauty, my sleeping beau,Repeatedly giving me the gift of my own full night of sleep.I should sing the praises more often.I should sing them while they last.

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Handmade | Amy Alexander

After the son,my hands wept for loss of claythen, after the girl, they forgot the feeling.Their new calling was cloth swaddling waste,a foul swan bound for the sewertook the statue’s place,and there would be no more faces, no more figures,broad hips with folded armsI was the fertility idol, now, only flaccid

I made, in my mind, a sculpture of a woman,whole on one side,hole on the other,full and then empty, cause that’s how I feltWithout time or energy for clay,

I filled a Mason Jar with pieces of Barbie and Baby Alive,I snapped them apart at the joints and divided their plastic minds from their plastic bodies,they smiled through the warped glass,day and night, they smiled, they were empty but they looked full

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I wrote, “I am disassembled,”I wrote, “I don’t recognize myself.”I wrote, “I dreamed a house at the edge of the desert.”I wrote, “the animals are all drowning.”

My studio filled with voices as the children grew,voices and the mothers they belonged to,all of our materials were non-toxic but we told truth,pastel mandalas pressing hard,life apart at the seams in abstract, water based,nests out of mud and sticks from the backyard,breast milk and crayons on a sheet of cottonstitches putting back the bodiesnew bodiesfinding old hands

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A Turtle Carries its Home On Its Back | Jacquelyn Bengfort

and for that I admire it. Still, above all else,

I want a laundry room.

No, hear me out.

In such a room, with beautiful large machines,

we could wash, oh, anything out of our sheets.

In a room like this, in a house like that,

we could start each day fresh,

unwrinkled, stainless, blameless.

You know, I had my kids in the middle

of a city and I’m looking for someplace to run to.

Try this: list all the things you want

to run from. Where do you end up?

Nowhere on earth is my answer,

though on a good day I may laugh,

Canada. On my best days I think,

A snug little house with a laundry room,

now, that could be a start.34

35Farmer’s wife, ironing in kitchen.

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Long Arms | Maureen Langloss

I come from a long line Of mothers with homemadeSugar cookies in theCupboard. God at the table.

My kid’s sewing machine livesOn our table—with the takeout.I don’t know how to use it. Also, my vintage MacBook Pro. Half-drunk cups of tea

forgotten between paragraphsand swear words. I aspire to angel food cake under glass—a single slice removed, angels exposed, singing hymns, making itmore inviting than cake already,

by birthright, is. I aspire to lemons—in transparent bowls— casting their fresh citrus goodness, their tart suggestion of French 75,of pucker. Maybe limes too. Limes and daisies in vases. Separate vases. Matching furniture would be nice. Bedside tables of equal size.

I do have piles on mismatched tables though. Maybethere are pictures of lemons or daisy poems or descriptions of baked goods hidden like prayers in thepiles of literary magazines and Real Simples and novels I’ve read to page 33 and catalogues from which I might purchase seam-free socks for my kid who has this sensation problem, this processing complaint, involvingseams, that turns her all monster, that makespiles of tears come out before the shoes go on. Hug. Hug.

There are piles of drafts on tables too. Stories poems essays novels rambling walking kinda slow. Twitchy. Covered with pencil marks over margins under knickers behind ears like washcloths across baby skin. I’ve surely already inputted these revisions in the MacBook Pro, deleted them again, had them declined by the Submittable machine. Still, I save them next to piles of rainbows. Dozens of magic marker drawings, light separated into parts, because my kid with the seams has rainbow rainbow rainbow issues too. There’s probably a pharmaceutical to treat her addiction already in the piles of medicine boxes we’ve saved from the forty sick days my kids accumulatedthis year, saved with the instructions on pages so thin

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they slice me. Then there’s my middle child’s book: The Secret Life of Parents.

I wonder what she knows.

She writes paragraphs and erases them, puts pages into out of into piles. She gives me a kiss. My husband adds packing materials for all the things he might return or store, for the pains and angers I’ve caused him that he tosses on the piles too, kiss kiss, which are now wobbling with the weight of my son’s report cards from the school that gives him tests tests tests so long they take more than a day and come home wound-up in scrolls to hide the grades, tests for which I give hugs, make flashcards, type practice tests with irregular verb conjugations state capitals poems by dead white guys—which nuzzle up against stacks of shrink bills for the stress the insomnia the shit fuck damn those dead white guys and this living white mom

inflict on him. I’ll never tidy these piles because they’re the kind of mom I am, the dusty, limping sort who grows long arms with suction cup fingers to keep them all from toppling and hugs all around and lukewarm water in the bath, at least twenty in progress on Submittable and email lists for that

class mom job they keep givingand I keep accepting, accepting.

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39The Bridge | Amy Alexander

In the Garden | Bea Alamo

My mother tends to her gardenearly on Saturday morningbefore the sunslips in through the trees.I happen to be awake at this time(I can never sleep wellat home nowadays)and I walk outto the far side of the backyard,where her flowers bloom.She whispers their namesinto each of their petalsthat ache from too much sleep,then pours them a glass of water.

When she goes onabout her flowers to me,I am angry at the way she talksbecause I can’t speak fluent Spanish with her,and I am jealous of her laugh linesbecause they weren’t therebefore I left home.

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She taught me the meaning ofdemasiado.It means too much,like when there’s a perfectly good chairsitting across from mine at the dinner tablethat my mother refuses to fill or move,even after ten years.“But remember,you can’t use mucho there. There’s a difference.‘Te amo mucho, pero duele demasiado.’”

Is that what she meant when my brother left his body in the hospital room?Is that why she cares more for her flowerbed than her own?

But she is glowing now,she is not empty anymore,so I don’t dare ruin this for her.

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A Colleague Says I Can’t Be A Good Teacher | Emma Bolden

because I can’t feel, can’t love the way I should because I didn’t have children (she doesn’t say can’t) & shock lays its silence in my mouth, an un-

yolked egg, & so I sit in my quiets while the meetingbuzzes around me, all the mouths munching their cottagecheese & canned peaches & romaine leaves working

against silence like a movie, I refuse to cry, I refuse tohate her, I refuse to speak because there’s noway to word the drive back home after the blood

tests & questions, after I’d signed to acknowledgethe risks of hysterectomy, after a Chevy stopped in traffic beside me & I looked into a window & then

into the eyes of a child, pigtailed & big toothed & waving & then I wasn’t driving just arriving in the far lane then the gas station where I cried while a sign

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offered my tires air for twenty-five cents, because a lifeis a ledger that won’t reveal its losses, because it tookmonths for the organs in my abdomen to settle

into the empty my surgeon made of the place my uterus had been but no baby became mine to have or to hold, because a plan is just a list to which

your body must agree, because even if she knows the facts she doesn’t know how it hits me on a Monday through Sunday, in stadiums &

grocery stores & exit lanes & televisions, how every story rises its action to the same resolution, which is no, which is not, un-, none, & how many

years will I be there, here, in this classroom with thiscottage cheese, with the bright peeling off the overheadlights & falling onto the whiteboard where I will never

stop seeing the math lesson she’d scrawled for her students (less than, less than, less than) until the bell rings & the outside becomes a bright I can’t believe

still lives, still lights the children so beautifully into a recognition of my never that I wait in the stall & don’t cry until all their impossible sweet

small shoes squeak out of the bathroom & then I can’t stop it, the loss delivered of me so loud & clear & high.

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45Howl | Amy Alexander