longing, in public
Companion Song: Cherry Wine- Overcoats
It is hard to forget my mother when I see her in every woman that I pass on the street.
The curve of her neck, just there, between my neighbor’s hunched shoulders, hands reaching to snip her geraniums.
The same tattoo, butterflied against the cashier’s wrist- my mother’s was on her ankle. This fact does not matter. It’s hers all the same.
There and there again, hair twisted high above the other heads of the farmers market crowd, coat tucked tight into her pits, and my breath goes with her as she passes.
I would know my mother by smell alone, by the vibrations in her throat that lulled me to sleep as a child, by the notches in her spine that I used to count before bed.
I’d know her by the freckle on her left hand, the mole on her right.
It’s like the world is playing a game, lining up all these mothers for me through a one-way mirror, choose choose choose. But she’s never in the lineup.
It’s my greatest nightmare and most absolute longing to find her again.