She is the pinnacle of wrenching the last crumbed teardrop out of the cereal box upon waking. I want more silky light that is mothering light that drips over my body as I rise out of the bed and make all of this work. Make half a life matter to the rest of the decades unfolding as we speak of parsnips and pandemics and pain. Painting our mothers as we see them fit, as we imagine comfort not at all. As we rise up we hear two girls crying in the alleyway or was it wind or were they cats. Too many vectors are contributing to our thought lines now, if this is all the space we were meant to take up. Picking them up, this morning, the little ones, they do not look down as they jump then dart around the areas.
Emily Koehn lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and teaches at Washington University and the St. Louis Poetry Center. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including the Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, Conduit, Waxwing, and The Journal.
