Mother, I half-wish you were here and half-wish you weren’t

to see the trees battling the skyscrapers for airspace

          the hunchback boulders jutting out like baby teeth from beneath soiled skin

to feel pebbled bones galloping like landslides beneath rubber-soled shoes

          and feel like ants in the ocean of the world

dormant rock pressing the fingerprints of another era into sunburnt palms

Mother, if you are here, take caution: we are not who we once were

clambering down cliff-sides untamed and creed-less

We lost our fearlessness where we lost our footing

and the tourists here heave hesitation in their breath just as much as they store it in their steps

a little girl confesses to her father as they tiptoe over the crevices the wild things conquered:

would you like to know why I don’t step in the puddles? I don’t want to slip. I don’t want to fall.

(I wonder: what happened to falling? [asleep, apart, in love])

(I wonder: what happened to risk-taking, to leaps of faith, to childish freedoms?)

Mother, the fences make me miss your mania

as they weave through manicured lawns like a labyrinthine leash

I came here to feel captivated; instead, I feel catalogued

oh, precious lifeline

oh, fossilized bloodline

I will find you again

• where the gossiping robins shed their wings
• where insects invade notebook-bound borders, their carcasses smeared into the spine
• where moss and unknown foliage grow over candy wrappers and crumpled cigarettes
• where the trees hold ‘careful’ on their rustling tongues and swallow the word on an exhale

                     (even they grow wilder on top)

Mother (Nature), whatever wreckage we leave, reclaim it.

Won the Sidney Cox Memorial Prize as a part of the poetry collection Along Family Lines

Dartmouth College Department of English & Creative Writing, spring 2025