Something Found

Prompt from Florence, Alabama poetry open mic night hosted at Kennedy Douglas Art Center

It is around here somewhere. Perhaps on the top shelf, behind the pilled towels. In the middle of the wad of dingy, clean but washed in iron laden water, undergarments. In the fibers of forest green carpet in my childhood living room you might find sequins from the Pocahontas ballet costume. The swinging chandelier rocks after an earthquake, creak, squeak, leak. Water finds a way, there is a patch of green carpet removed and replaced with a floral mat because water found a way into the wall, icicle melt. What am I looking for? I woke up early. Like my father always has. Am I finding I am his mirror? Not anymore. A carnival warping image where I am short, long, stout and he is small, shadowed, hunched. I ask my mom where the old photos are. She doesn’t know. She finds some where we all look like we are ready to board a yacht in the 80s. She asks me if I want that photo, any of them, she is getting rid of them. Ready to throw them out. I am not sentimental, but I find a lump like cancer gnarling in my womb. So unnatural, so ready to discard her granddaughter because she speaks of AOC over the hemorrhaging red, white and blue. So protective of life. Of womb. Of blood. Of tissue, of sanctum, sacred saint but cut, severed sawed when she doesn't recognize her old glory. Blood like the confederate flag on my dad’s tool chest, in a machine shop in Alaska so distant from a grave in Alabama. Is it time to push? Medicate? Natural birth. Abort. Now. A medical necessity. A human requirement. Body, choice, mothers, Americans, daughters. Uterine lining rebuilds. Woman finds a way.

Once was lost but now is found.