The Bone-Coves of My Mother

My daughter walks into the room

and it’s the first time

I notice the roundness

of her belly. I see a baby 

backlit in watery nutrients.

I too had once been a baby,

a heart beating fast

like bird wings

inside my mother.

In the genetic pool of her DNA

I formed liquid eyes and skin

sculpted bone and limbs

blue mouth gaping

suddenly able to swallow.

I could hear muffled voices

and on occasion see

a blurry bright source

of light.

My only intention

to grow

into a familiar shape:

ten delicate fingers and toes

organs tucked into tissue

into bone-coves that became

the machinery of what

is human. Oh, and I was to know

nothing of the promise

my mother made not

to pass on her trauma.

She tried to keep

the burn of the lonely nights

from going deep. The burden

of caring for four children

alone; father absent another night.

The anguish in her bloodstream

like some terrible drug.

It poured into my veins

buzzing like an insect on fire.

Today, I suspect it lies there

like a watchful animal, like

some nameless disease.

I feel it on my tongue,

under my fingernails, in my follicles.

I relive it in the moments of

my first marriage:

his culture, a different language

rolling off tongues, our first child born

in the heat of August.

When I sat alone at parties

not understanding the topic

poking at saucy rice on my plate.

I feel it again in the moments of

my second marriage

child #2, campfire coals burning

and my husband passed out

in the camper before dinner.

And in the moments 

among friends and family

yet alone, burrowing deeper.

It has always been like this:

I am my mother

looking out the living room window

waiting. And then my daughter

says they are thinking

of boy names and I see

what great hope she has for him.