Chapbook Poem 4

My mother keeps a list

of everyone she wants to pray for

stuck to the mirror in her bathroom.

All our hurts spelled out

on green post-it notes.

I'm sure she'd added me this week,

my name dashed with his.

I feel her prayers in my ankles,

which have been sprained and broken

enough to know what healing is.

To pray for my mother,

for all the thistles

that have passed between us,

I would have to cover

my walls with her name, a name

that means beautiful in a language

I don't understand. I only saw this grace

after I made her cry

like a river had been broken

inside her, swelling with love

and disappointment,

all the things that make us human.