Today’s choice

Previous poems

Precious Ejim

by | May 18, 2026 | ,

 

 

 

Motherly misery

I don’t know why I look to my mother
for her shadow never stays.
promises are whispered
soft as fur, then shed.

I grow between hunger and shame,
guilty for wanting warmth,
from her body.

she is not cruel.
only miserable.
the kangaroo with a torn pouch
sometimes I’m carried,
sometimes I fall.

I gather my own shelter:
sticks, spit, scraps––
digging through what others discard
to make something that might hold.

then she returns, a bird
swoops low, lifts me briefly,
as if love were instinct
never permanent.

I don’t know why I look to my mother
for her shadow won’t stay.

 

 

Precious Ejim is a writer from Boston, Massachusetts. Her work explores womanhood, longing, and emotional vulnerability in contemporary life. She is interested in intimacy, interiority, and the emotional textures of being young and female.

Max Wallis

by | Oct 10, 2025 | ,

god grant us the serenity / to accept the things we cannot change / the courage to change the / things we can / and the wisdom to know el differencio /