I am counting the number of days
since I last talked to my mother;

not to worry, we have not been okay
my entire life, so this is not anything new

by the stretch of the imagination.
It’s funny, that phrase—imagination like

a rubber band, and a million versions of us
in between going farther away as you

stay in your end of the deal, and as do I.
Mother, I wish you used the same material

to make my umbilical cord, so even
after my many falls, I could snap right back.

But you did not. The cord was connective tissue
and errands and the relief of not having period

pain for nine months yet the impending
astronomical event of having a whole new

body to feed, to recognize as your own,
a spitting image of that ancestral buildup

you know well: the never making something
of your life, the token of You and Papa’s

foolishness, barely thirtysomethings yet
fates already sealed. When the doctor

cut through my only tether to you,
no one knew from then on I would be

on my own, and it would take seventeen
more years for me to know that. I am

counting the number of days you will
waste thinking there will ever be

a way to ******* back to you.