I have kept an eye on that nice young mother.
– SHARON OLDS
Mother, I
understand now how you could have
left the child weeping in the sink, how you could have kept
the pot on the stove until it seethed, torrents spitting to the floor, an—
other quiet ruined evening. They never met your eye
when you returned from the dark, instead looked on
over your head and flashed smiles like jewelry. That
was a certain kind of hell, wasn’t it? Years of those nice
simpering grins, neat Christmas cards, Sunday mornings of blithe sun and young
girls tugging at your skirt, the word shrill as a bird—mother, mother, mother