Mother Mirror by Meghan Sterling

She was house poor, mortgaged to the moon, light-starved,

married to a closed door, furious. No outlets, nowhere

to tell the story. It outed in hailstorms of rage, as it will.

I forgive her for this. 20 years later, I am house poor,

steeped in rent, light-starved, married to a window, seeking solitude

and quiet, more than I can find, more than is allotted to someone

with a small child. I see now: children take some of you into themselves

every day, along with their milk and bread, pieces of you inhaled

into their bodies as they scream into the silence, as they scatter

their cracker crumbs into your bed. There are things you know

and things you really know, the way I knew I would be giving up space

to bring her into my life, the way I really know that now,

stroking her hair and loving her and also craving quiet with my entire body,

like everything I’ve ever wanted before: a lover, coffee in the morning,

to be beautiful, and now, a vacuum around me, morning deep in gray dawn

and nothing but the soft hiss of the heater and the sound of keys clattering

as I discover the stories found in stillness that only belong to me.

Meghan Sterling’s work has been published in Rattle, Glass, Sky Island Journal, Red Paint Hill, and many others. She has been awarded a Hewnoaks Artist Colony Residency in 2019 and 2021. Her first full-length collection, These Few Seeds, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books in 2021. Read her work at meghansterling.com or find her on Instagram at meghansterlingpoet.