Mother Tale

By Anna Potter

We tell each other stories

I tell you how in eighth grade I tried to graft new flesh

Onto my birthmark, how when I began the crime of bleeding,

I dammed myself with cotton and chocolate.

You tell me how your body formed from the crust of earth,

how desire rose in you with the same ache as morning sky,

and how heavy it has been ever since.

I had forgotten this until now, but once

An old friend coaxed me with stories of how the sun rises in Haiti,

how my body’s vacancy might soothe his own.

Another recalled how she observed the curvature of the earth from an airplane window,

The same plane that tore her from motherland, mother tongue, mother

now my friend tells me as he pulls espresso, the vapors dense as rainforest fog,

about Penang children, Swiss bars, Buddhist monks turned gospel teachers

We tell each other’s stories

a story of a bare-chested girl without mother:

How she wrapped herself around my friend in innocent and wild desperation:

I do not even know her name.

I tell you about the year I lived in Amsterdam:

How I can trace the canal rings in my own veins,

How I met a son whose breath held the cadence of return,

How I learned to ride my bike with no hands.

You tell me, sometimes, when you have had enough to eat,

About your fear of barrenness:

How you sense the absent rotation in your womb,

How you absorb the echo of your mother,

And mother’s mother

We tell each other stories

We tell each other’s stories

Not symbolic as we had hoped,

But our mother tale, the story to begin all stories.

“Mother Tale” won first place in our Fall 2020 Poetry Contest.