I dig for my lost birth

control in the trash can,

at your house, Mama.

You who gave birth to daughters

and daughters almost. When

I write about miscarriage, I don’t ask

what you would have named her,

far enough along to know the sex. I wasn’t alive

to see the day if my older sister would be my older sister,

brother, older of all, both male and female,

for gender knows no confines, but I’m confined to this:

when I write about miscarriage, I don’t ask you

details, instead say this: the mama in my story isn’t you,

she holds on to God, but when she holds loss as poppy

flower stains, help me carry your pain correctly.  

When I say excavation, when I say doctors hunting

even for absence. Especially so. When I say Mama defined

as a daughter losing daughters. When I say wound

and womb sound too similar, I think of how my love

and I don’t know if we want children yet.

But we croon at small things, nuzzle against dog ears with our mouths.

Mama, I don’t know if I will carry your same stitches.

You say I’m getting at the feeling when I describe the inside of you

as a pink cave pleading to close, curved walls made of rib.

Hysterectomy hisses like history, like a family tree small

enough to trace but rooted deep in the soil. Mama please

let me hold your sorrow, let me love you for her, for him,

for me, for the both of us, don’t read this if it hurts. Please

Mama I am trying to put balm on the stitches like a note

passed under a locked door.

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