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.