I wake and it’s here,
in my shallow breath
the cold rising—
fear is all fingers, cold boney fingers coiling
squeeze lungs twisting muscles
greedy morning glory fingers reach
and wring

I fear so much—
being too cold, too hot, too fat
too hungry
untethered
too broken, too wrong, too right
unbending
giving too little, too much
missing the point
I fear 2028
rich white men
on top
waters rising, babies crying
in closets
I fear death, but pain more, I fear death
but leaving more
heights and small spaces, I fear losing
my freedom and the freedom I’ve lost
I only have one pair of feet

I fear the future

I fear the future fear imagines—
weeping mothers stinking waters
broken earth, apocalyptic
winners and losers, alone
in brambles or white rooms
passed over by
Wholeness

       My eyes tune in
to shifting light

Fear is all cold fingers and high drama—
cracking knuckles, it writes its own story
always the same score, sly rascal
and grandiose,
end to its beginning

       Feet find the cold morning floor
my fingers know the way to kettle and pen
I’ll write a different ending

My mothers tell me
not with pearls in pretty velvet boxes
or words in leather-bound books
proclaimed,
but in buried memory and coiled threads
stitched together over generations—
who i am

head down pattern
repeated, deaf to its echo
ocean blue over prairie wheat over
thick mud brown turns murky
winding spinning battening
fabric woven—

a kind of fate

destined, we are women without men—
all to our children, knotted hands uncomplaining, holding
deepest love so deep it holds too tightly
standing boldly outside
the measure

obedient, we are women armed—
sharp eyed ironclad we stubbornly
manage life
mitigating disaster, securing the fray
keeping watch

doomed, we are women hard-boiled—
knowing loss, we look neither left nor right
reaching only to gods
and goddesses for friendship,
lonesome

until one day empty
and by the grace of god, I pause—
turn my eyes
and see my sisters too

I am an avatar
fearless defender of mortals
with yellow mom hair

I’m a wisecracking plushy
just the right size
to pull close in the night

a bright voice on the phone
soothing smile on a screen
my thumbs say i ♥︎ u a thousand times over

but not the warm body
she is wired to hold, the heart beat she’s known
since before birth

no matter the story, missing’s the same

a thousand times apart, a thousand
broken hearts

Steeped in the tea of my mother’s womb
a weak blend of oxygen, anxiety and grief
dregs reused, until we are both
spent

Tough cut tenderized by my fathers
no brine in the house, so use brute force instead
pummelled into submission, until I
tear

Simmering in the holy water of the church
a recipe older than Salem, uses fear as its base
and shame, until I am
nothing

It’s a ******* wonder I haven’t been swallowed whole
by the big bad wolf
or despair, though I’ve come close

Time to eat the cook
and burn the recipe

2:00 am and it’s that other-worldly heat
rising from the deepest hell, earth’s centre
extra a.f., as she would say
and she would know
at 15—
our separate bodies (spring of her life, mine between) give way
to an inevitable biology

2:00 am and another long hazy chain of women
my foremothers, and we are
single file, through burnt fields in blazing sun
walking a thousand miles
searching for god,
or our free selves—
tired faith stirs
to rightful power

Again, and a heavy grey-smudged blanket
settles around me, uneasy
I sip black tea with milk, eyes adjust, and
night becomes a friend
morning light will appear again
as it does—
fear surrenders
to the unknowable

In the night, like my bearded ancestors
shouting sermons from rough cut pulpits, doctrine
five hundred years old,
I am making peace
but laying down body, soul and mind
not arms—
a new pacifism
old as my mothers

not my mother, but
those before
were teachers of stillness—
to choose it, feel whole in it
bow to it
and wait…

across oceans
my mothers wrote their stories with pencil,
or fingers in thin air
words carried, indelibly
over miles and mountains
in strands and time—

waiting to be found

I see them sometimes
caught in a turning breeze
suspended in Fall colours

clinging to another mother’s web

I feel their warmth in the weak winter sun
more persistent now
following the horizon

I hear them in my dreams, the anguished ones
lead-heavy and fallen
overgrown with raveled life
and rusted

On my tongue melting like honeycake

Rising in wood fire
and spring soil

they are my words now
to tend to, crystalline
and holy

I wait
and i sing

the day before grief pulled up
with moving van and solemn promise
it was summer,
and i was wearing a cotton print dress,
yellow flowers and bare feet
or maybe it was my mother

that day, the day before
she was swirling slow motion
like in a movie, face to the sun flashing
through young leaves
making patterns,
arms wide

that day, the day before
i snuck a zwieback from the summer kitchen
and watched melting butter make
golden pools,
some dripped onto my dress
but i didn’t worry

that day, the day before the cold snap
wicked north wind,
the sun shone
and we were warm

butter still melts our hearts