By Amanda DettmanN
Really it’s possible to believe she has nowhere
else to go but children—
the kids tuck in her stuffing as if she’s a bear
losing a threaded eye. She wants this year
to be dead and the dad who left her
when she was five. It confuses her
to not have had any stop signs, used
postage, raven claw omens, or blood,
releasing nothing but grace over
the toilet, squeezing her, then baptizing
her thumbtack head through, not in,
this bowl of water, mostly just
humming heavier, like a room
with chandeliers.
And worse is she never steps out
for a break, like her mother never left
the dinner table when her brothers threw
spaghetti at the walls; this shock the kind
when a childhood pet passes in sleep,
a familial thing always the most stunning.
Maybe her mother miscarried.
And the one before that
in a cabin or a creek or a dock
at summer camp. Maybe
she is waiting for a child to carry her
the way her mother never did, a star that crawls
down the throat like springtime.
One student repeats the word fat!
pointing to his spelling in red crayon.
Where did you learn that? she asks, rubbing
her stomach like a beer can at a birthday party.
My mum! he yells, cheeks the size of jam jars.
Only around lunchtime does she tell me
what happened—the doctor, the glove, the oil,
the bed. She has wrapped her rainbow
robe so tight I’m sure the string is screaming;
who chooses to carry the knot of the leaving? This
space a bean bag or lopsided desk, that purpling
sock in a cubby from last month.
And maybe today she is the most calm
because of her unknowing. No answer
or counting activity planned. We fill yellow
balloons in the back sink together to teach
matter, hips about to dislocate
our own gaseous beauty.