RHIANNON BRIGGS

My mother knows her family

ends with her parents’ death.

She tells me so. Her guilt

breaking. (She loves

 

the ocean, she always

puts her feet in.)

 

& what do centuries matter

to decades. & what do lifetimes

matter to tears. How her sister

in childhood fashioned an other

 

incandescent mother. 

How for a moment

we laughed. How 

I did not understand. 

 

I wonder if my mother knows

how seagulls fly inland 

when the air speaks

to them of changing

tides, how danger approaches

before the sky turns grey. 

My mother says

​

my mom and I see

what I have not

and am empty. 

My mother says

please

 

and I have changed

my mind. my mother says

 

I’m sorry and 

I cannot help but know

her and cry. I wonder

 

if my mother knows how

love wells up, how knowing

becomes something else, 

something I have

 

not learned the word for. 

I wonder if

my mother knows 

how inheritance

 

is nothing. How 

I know a daughter

sees what she will be

​

blind to. How I called

her momma. How my mother

does not know her family

begins with her. How 

I do not know her family 

began with me.