In the morning

Jessica Spruill Waggoner

we spill into the yard, wild,
split up, search for whatever
we’d waited all night to get back to—
into the creek to wake salamanders,
the field to examine spittlebug suds
clinging to dewy hay stalks,
behind the shed to watch scratch
at chicken wire six ring-necked pheasants.

Inside, our mother demands
the dryer bring itself back to life,
balances basket on hip,
sighs when it refuses, trudges
up the green steps from the basement,
through the kitchen, the porch,
to the yard. She hangs
bedsheets from a rope
suspended between trees, pins
dresses in three sizes
handed down sister
to sister to sister,
smooths my father’s motor
oil- and paint-stained jeans, fusses
over spots irremovable.

Cool white sunlight sifts through leaves
and I have my first experience of deja vu:

How many times by then had I dreamt
she rose into a blinding beam of light,
angel at each elbow, eyes
up, not so much as a glance back
at me, racing across wet grass
to drag her back down?

My mother, a kite caught briefly
in branches, soars skyward,
gone. She probably dreams
of this sort of escape.
Knuckles raw, bleached and broken;
belly now soft, thrice stretched, once
stitched; shoulders stooped before thirty—
who wouldn’t wish her daughter
could dream her away?

From this moment, I resent god
and angels, those thieves.

At the edge of the woods is a hollow
tree, its door dark and deep, we regale
each other with its folklore:
a mouth to the underworld; anyone
who steps inside falls
forever, never to be seen
again. We are possessed
of many fears. Alone
in unspeakable nightmares.

When I slip into that dream again,
I do not try to catch my mother
and keep her. I braid lassos of grass,
pray to follow unseen,
for if I cannot
make her stay,
I won’t.