What would I know of being a mother.
For a month, it has rained. I wait
to be rid of it. When I dream
it is of a bell, an animal split from
the yoke. I wake in a pool of milk.
Another attempt to fill the absence.
This is nothing I have not earned.
I imagine another life and in it
I was kind. I believed in God. This is
the life I have made, I say. I watch
a streak of light stain the dark, its
silence thrusting outward. There is nothing
made to last. Not the thimble of rock
hurtling downward in the distance.
Not the crag of fossil someone sturdy
finds embedded in the dirt. Somehow
it has been eons. All of this is true. Is it
not a wonder. O, dust. O, body of ash.
There you are where I left you.
Elizabeth Hickson
Elizabeth Hickson is a graduate of Brooklyn College, where she earned her MFA in Poetry, and Wake Forest University, where she earned her B.A. in English Literature. Her work has been published in Booth, december magazine, Sundog Lit, Volume, and elsewhere. Most recently, she was the winner of West Trade Review’s 2024 Prize for Poetry, judged by Brian Turner. Originally from Ohio, she currently lives in North Carolina.
