For my mother.
My mother tells me lately she has seen
herself anew in the letters
others wrote of her. Like her grandfather,
whom I never met, who cradled her
reticent and told her mother
hundreds of miles away of her daughter's
calligraphy: the way she would signal desire
with her fingers, wordlessly,
and so make herself seen. This art too
did I practice as a child, my mother
flashing her eyes warily
wherever I pointed, because I was afraid
of shaping air, of breaking my mouth open
and with it the world. Now
I feel some shared current surging
through her right arm and mine, jolting
the pens in our hands to life:
longing to cleave the fear, and write.
Note
I chose to share this poem with dVerse for their Open Link Night (July 31, 2025).
Between Two Rivers 
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