Morning Sickness by Jessica Tanck

It’s true I can’t remember ever being hugged by my mother,
but I do recall being led by my dad to her bedside

every morning near the end. My sister and I stood there
in our backpacks and jumpers, lined up as if to offer

her something, as if we might reach her wherever she was.
Too small to see much over the piled blankets, I tried

to fit my arms around her as my eyes veered away, darted
at the bedroom window, which looked out at a brick wall—

terrified of being caught forever in her hair, the cobweb
strands of it draped quiet down the bed, bathed in the smell

of sleep. I cannot remember her as waking or asleep but
somewhere in between, face-up in some underworld river.

Even now I wonder at her ever-open, ever-shut eyes, worry
that she is still angry with me for pulling away—for wanting to.

My dad says she used to lock me and my sister in closets.
This, too, I can’t remember, but I like to think

it an act of tenderness, of safekeeping—her pressing a kiss
to each of our foreheads, holding us for a moment before

shutting us in. Leaving us to the warm dark, the quiet.
Us two peering through the slats at the lit room beyond—

the kind of light you can only see from a pocket
of darkness. The kind of light into which one must break.

Jessica Tanck lives and writes in central Illinois, where she is a third-year MFA candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, and Kenyon Review Online.