I Wept for My Mother

by Zoë Vorisek

I sat on a chair at home, I wept.

my long legs an elder like the trunk of trees,

sand covered my feet, ants crawled between toes

my bottom planted, my back arched like the Brooklyn Bridge

my mother sat in her armchair across

her breasts hidden under a sweater with the words born traveler

my home, smelled like her skin

the crack on the living room wall like the lines on her hands,

lies slept between her knuckles

please—let me go, she said.

her voice a fragile bridge, her body my favorite shape.

Image credit: Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

she bare bones of a strong ox,

her brain a soft-tempered lip crusted with age

on the table between us sat a box, filled with letters my

mother folded every time she swore.

I gift a letter to open when you need my words

I fought with my mother over words

//

I recollected her—

I see her every day in the box sitting on the table

her face faded on the walls,

dipping behind the trees outside home

the leaves inscribed with her words

god never gives you more than you can handle

the letters she wrote me, the ones I collected in the box,

I knew I would read them one day

my fingers touched the paper, her words folded

***

Zoë Vorisek

Zoë Vorisek is a graduate of Harvard College and an MFA candidate in poetry at Brooklyn College. She received the 2024 Himan Brown Poetry Award and the Hogan Greta Buchwald Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Oddball Magazine and Eunoia Review.