Today's poem is by Kimberly Ann Priest

Trailer House
       

My son reaches for my sympathy, constantly.
He wants more of me—
this boy nearly grown into a man wants more.

I could tell him that when he was merely a button
stitched to the lining of my coat,
a bead tucked into my shell, a kernel of wheat
starring itself to an ovular wound in my earth,

I shook,

carried my body to the floor, held it there,
felt his fetus ingesting—my day-to-day existence
pre-packaged and fertilized in a 14x70 trailer house;

I was windowed, the trailer door knocked loose,
knob spilling with universe,
boundaries tampered with, renamed:
the way my husband never hit me but always left a bruise.

Now that my husband is gone,
the windowpanes indulge the sky,
and my son stands in the kitchen daring me to flee—
light shoved into his eyes like broken crystal.

He can't see the organic parts of me stitched, tucked,
starred—the wound of his father suckling
a monster already grown,
consuming all my sympathy.

I adjust the curtain,
fill the sink with water and soap, grab a dish, apply
a sponge, pull ever so gently away.

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Copyright © 2023 Kimberly Ann Priest All rights reserved
from Slaughter the One Bird
Sundress Publications
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission