That Kind of Mother

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The Meadow Journal, 2023

I like to walk my neighborhood in a shirt my daughter cut short

without asking because she wanted the world

to see my belly, and right now it’s full

of soup we made from two big, sweet onions and the bones of a deer

that ran these hills until my husband stood over her crying 

in a wheat field because he hadn’t seen the fawn. All of that is in my belly

too as I walk past a porch of teenagers smoking and trying not to look

at each other’s beautiful, young legs. If they look up they’ll see me and

might look away

from the stretch marks showing above the rim of my jeans. Their 

discomfort 

doesn’t bother me. They’d be surprised by their own bones 

waiting inside. I know bones, and I’m not surprised anymore. 

Soup and the absence of surprise floating around in me

alongside the songs my mom would sing on Sundays. Her coral

Estee Lauder lips. If she saw me watching her mouth move, 

she’d brush my forearm lightly with her painted nails until I couldn’t

help but close my eyes. Her belly, stretch mark free, but she didn’t

walk her neighborhood in a shirt too short for a woman 

her age, and I never considered until just now that she might have longed

to do so.