I visit my mother
at her new house
after dinner and we wait
for the harvest moon
on her porch steps.
In the suburbs,
the ferns are fresh
and fragrant, the wind
white and wet.
We are still and silent.
We offer our faces up
like paper plates.
But when we lived together
as girls, we were quick.
We carried groceries
up city steps
in trips and shifts,
up from yellow brick
and trolley tracks,
out of closing markets
and six-pack pubs.
We climbed to small dark
house after small
dark house all those years.
We were strong, lifting
our gallons of milk alone.
We spoke all the way, soft,
with sweet spring water
in our little throats,
the moon watching us,
maybe, like a mother
we never knew
- Shannon Sankey
Shannon Sankey is a fellow and master’s of fine arts candidate at Chatham University. Her poems have appeared in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Atticus Review and The Rectangle, as well as being featured on Prosody Radio. She lives in the East End of Pittsburgh.
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