Mama Marilyn! Look over here! No Mama! Not there, over here!
I hear my children giggling as
I

follow their voices inducing me through the passageways of
my childhood house. The pitted walls are painted magnolia-white
and the white carnations Daddy bought are dry like
tongues in a chipped, blue vase along
the corridor cluttered with Daddy’s old Oxford shoes.

My children’s shadows leap and dance across the creaky walls:

Look over there Mama Marilyn! It’s going to be a girl!
A girl Mama! Mama, a beautiful girl Mama with twists of
sweet confetti in her hair Mama!

And a few yards across from me – my own
mother with her shock of blonde hair
like corpse hair and head buried on a stiff
pillow –

giving birth on a summer’s day. She shrieks

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