For
Abilene
In the middle of the worst time,
my mother told me, “I choose life.”
I don’t remember much from then,
but when you began, little one,
something thawed inside me.
My heart grew with you,
forced to stretch wide enough
for joy to sit alongside grief.
The day you were born I held you
until my arms went numb,
until I understood the need
for the world to make room.
You don’t choose life,
eventually it comes to claim you.
The rest is a frozen stream
just before springtime,
the trough of a wave,
an exhale.
an exhale.
