When he is sick every man wants his mother.
Restless, stumbling & searching.
For relief he bites my shoulder. Then my leg.
In her absence another woman will do.
I say no: a no I have never given him,
reprimand outweighing comfort,
a sick baby has his mother,
but if her comfort fails, what next?
It’s raining; no one sleeps. The baby
shuts the keyboard on my fingers.
What remains: the facts
of what I remember. Long for.
A sick mother remembers.
This rainy spring day what I want
is 1983. The maps on my childhood wall.
I want old countries to exist.
I want a child’s body. Not to hold. To inhabit.
I want to pool that body at my mother’s feet,
to cry & tug too hard at the phone cord,
to rip our matching jumpers with rainbow piping.
A day as miserable,
unimportant as the tissue
shredded by a tantruming child.
The only day I want.
Laura Tanenbaum is a teacher, writer and parent. She has published poetry and short fiction in journals including Anti-Heroin Chic, Rattle, Rust & Moth, On the Seawall, DIALOGIST, Cleaver Magazine, and many others. She has also published essays and book reviews in The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Jacobin, Dissent, Entropy, and elsewhere. She is a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. Some of her writing can be found on her website and newsletter.