By Cortney Esco
/ Poetry /
We’re out of eggs,
and while I've got you, I'm sorry about that time
I made you cry in the kitchen.
Do you remember? It was after
the doctors found your sister's stage 4
cancer, and your auto-immune disease,
and my father was gone with his mistresses,
and my childhood dog was dead.
That reminds me, we’re out of cat food
and carrots and cheese.
You’d asked a simple question,
did I think I ever wanted to be a mother
and I didn’t think about it when I said
that I probably couldn’t bear to watch
a child learning that it would someday die,
that it would have to bury me,
that I had pushed it into this life
knowing full well that it would suffer
and grow and die, and still I wanted it
because I wanted to love something.
If you want more milk get that too
while you’re out. I know you like it
in your tea when you’re trying to unwind.
I said I couldn’t imagine being
that selfish and when you cried
it really surprised me because
you never cry in front of people.
Can you get some more sugar also,
I’ve started to like hot tea at night too.
Because I’m not good at it,
and because I don’t know how,
I never told you I was sorry, that really
I was angry at myself for wanting,
sometimes, to die. The truth is,
I was trying to answer the question
of why God would make us this way,
because I used to know the answer
but I’d forgotten what it was.
Get a whole chicken too if you want
and I’ll roast it when you get home.
I’ll make it like we made it
when I was a child, but likely
burn it a little, and we’ll pray
before we eat it together
because I know now I would choose
to be your daughter, even knowing what I know,
because I love you and when our slim bodies
are similar sets of bones in the cold dark,
I will love you still and always.