Motherhood

I read an article that described a mother
bear who appeared to grieve after her cub
was hit by a car.
I’m a mother too, so I couldn’t help but
hear the shriek of metal mangling fur,
and see the bear pace the road
where her cub sprawled cooling in a puddle
of late afternoon sun.
I’m sure she nudged the baby again and again
and sobbed a hushed grunt,
urging the cub to stand and toddle into
the lattice of trees.
I imagine she promised fish & berries
& hickory nuts when autumn came.
She whispered into her cub’s stilled ears
while the sky unfurled into an ocean of stars.
The sky over my house was knife sharp
the day my youngest son
slipped out of the house and into the pool.
My husband found him and swears
his eyes were open as he hung
suspended in the deep end—
my boy whose skin
was as blue as his shirt,
as blue as that summer sky.
I snatched my baby and
laid him in a scrap of sunlight,
prodded his pliant chest
with the heel of one hand.
I begged him to cough, to cry,
to please please please come back.
I promised cupcakes & pizza
& apple cider donuts when autumn arrived.
I kissed breath into my baby’s
cold lips while the edges
of the sky unraveled.

Rachel Mallalieu is an emergency physician and mother of five. She writes poetry in her spare time. Her recent work is featured or upcoming in Blood and Thunder, Haunted Waters Press, Nelle, Anti-Heroin Chic, Entropy, 2River View, 8Poems, Tribes, Willows Wept Review, Rattle and elsewhere.