Ella’s on the radio,
the market’s berries are glorious,
the headlines make me angry,
and you are my companion still,
while I wait for the tight collar of
my throat to ease into tears.
All the years I looked for the differences between us,
to know my otherness.
Yes, you said, you are yourself,
Self-actualized, you would say in serious social work talk.
Daughter, not yet mother, I reached up towards my own sun.
I see now how we’ve always walked in the same light.
My daughter reaches for my shoulder,
pulls herself into me,
because you sang me your father’s Russian lullaby,
because you made barley soup for me long after I left home,
because in my despair you said, “I have faith in your future.”
“You laugh like Ruth”, our cousins say.
Yes, I do, grateful for all the ways
I carry you with me,
motherline threads through me,
holding me to you, daughter and mother both.
