Walking into the kitchen,

sleepy and 8 and nightgowned and knowing,

her mother sits at the kitchen counter

harming herself

again,

she speaks up, for the first time,

trying to stop her.

The girl is sent away

sharply,

that cut deep in her heart following her,

a small needy dog, for decades.

Until, one morning,

under broad green whispering trees,

cicadas thrumming toward full release of day,

her heart receives what grace that rejection was–

for had her plea changed the course

of her mother’s pain

she would have become indentured servant

to an identity:

I help, therefore I am.

In that grace came release from a lifetime

of doing others’ work for them,

the danger of not existing unless

she were needed.