for Chris Niedzwiecki
You don’t believe me
but there will come a time:
you will want
to kill him,
she said to her only daughter
over the newborn’s bald head.
The woman’s weary blue eyes
didn’t round off the truth,
any more than old tales
brought from Poland. These
weren’t stories of princesses
and magic leading to love
but stories of long winters
and hard work
leading to wisdom.
When you do, she said,
call me.
I’ll come
no matter what.
The daughter repeated her
mother’s words
to friends and family,
stabbed anew
with each retelling.
What a thing to say
about my first baby,
her first grandchild.
I am not my mother,
she said, sharpening
her resolve with soft baby kisses
warding off the prediction
through weeks of diapers and
nursing, through
wide-mouthed squalling
and arched baby smiles.
But after another long night
of inconsolable crying
she unloaded that baby
harshly in his crib,
telling her husband,
I don’t want
to be a mother any more.
I hate this.
Brushing his teeth
he said, if you feel that way
maybe we should put him
up for adoption.
His tone fed her anger.
Then call your mother.
Or I will.
Early, before the sun was up
this woman answered the call,
put a coat over her nightgown
and ran across snowy backyards
of her Cleveland neighborhood.
Sleep, she told her daughter,
staying all day,
child in her arms.
That grandson,
his eyes her shade of blue
stands tall and gracious
at her funeral.
He’s leaving
for Harvard divinity school
where he will surely learn
stories of sacrifice and love
and anger
that hold a people together
though he
knows them already
in the steady pulse
carrying her blood forward.
