“The Daughter”
Sometimes I like to write the title last
because I am so heavy of the dashed hopes
that come along with being the eldest and
the sister to the most shimmering darling baby boy
that an eldest daughter (the mother) has ever seen
with her heart. A small heart for a small job
for a large-minded child. me, waiting for things
to go well. Maybe for the first time, well.
Now, older, and waiting to not be sick again and
now that I’m finally not sick again,
Waiting to be an older sister again. Waiting
for the time to be present with my darling
precious baby son, I mean brother
who I kind of hope might never read this
because I definitely hoped that
I would do a better job as his (only?) mother.
a very short little girl with long braids and round glasses
two braids and a jumper, and patent leather shoes
and two best friends that are her age and one
very very sharp and mean-hearted teacher
who especially didn’t like this
eldest daughter (mother?)
that was me, at nine years old,
who maybe reminded her,
the evil teacher,
of her own (eldest?) daughter
who she forgot to mother along the way
or maybe her own over-mothering older sister
or maybe her possible younger sister that
she couldn’t properly mother as her child
or even as her sibling, equally lost
in the realm of the idea of a mother
but maybe I’ll never know
what happened to that teacher
before she happened to me.
And maybe I’ll never know
the kind of sister I could’ve been
to my kind and brilliant tiny baby brother
just a child in the palm of the hand of the universe
had our own mother not happened to me first.
APL
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