poetry

She Names Her Child the Way She Names Her Loss

Published in

Scuzzbucket

1 min readMay 5, 2023

and i name you Beautiful
conferring all i don't know i have
all i ever want in

one wish.
i vow never to raise you
the way my mother did

the chip comes off the tree trunk
in free reel
a mother

cannot control.
my mother couldn’t.
neither can i

how is it only at her death do i
realize her unsurpassed greatness?
does it have to be this way?

i see her astounding attainments.
rising above cruel worlds crawling
over themselves

i see her loneliness.
stepmother replacing hers
since age three

i see why she ruled punishment.
it pained her
more than it did me

i see her struggle to show love.
her comb reaching for my silken hair
not needing combing

i see her hurting when i left.
my journey possible only because
of her love i didn’t realize i had

she said set your child free.
i vowed never to raise you the way i was
before you were born. i didn’t

but are you better than me?

Thanks to Franco Amati for the kick-ass space in Scuzzbucket