I dreamed that I met your mother.
Not the women that you called by their first names
as a child; not the women your father carefully
introduced to you as you stared down at your knees.
Not the women who crouched to look you in the eye
and said, my aren't you a handsome little man just like
your daddy?
and you, still shy, always shy said nothing but looked into
their brown green gray eyes and saw someone else’s
mother, but not your own.

I met your mother. She who pressed you into being,
who molded you against herself, between her muscles.
The woman who fed you lifeblood
before spilling you out screaming for her.
The woman who looked into your eyes for the first
time in a hospital and saw her eyes and was scared
and packed a suitcase and left before
you grew into a half-version of herself.
I dreamed that I met your mother, and she gently reminded
me that I touch her womb every time I touch you.


She was wearing a long housedress, red with white peonies
and vines blooming and connecting like veins.
She was washing dishes and watching November birds
rise from the fields through her well-water eyes.
My son is a good man, she said and I agreed and the birds
took to the sky in lonely circles and disappeared.
In a dream I pressed my knee into the hollow behind your knee
and your mother smiled and said it was okay,
and all the not-mothers your father introduced to you
disappeared like November birds rising from the fields.