Ode to Remission
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so I hold things tighter:
the small-getting-smaller of her
running with my daughter down the beach,
every conch and whelk they gather,
the scar tissue just peeking out
of her swimsuit, her phone number
the only one on Earth I know by heart,
the way she watches pelicans dive-bomb
for breakfast like it’s a show she’s got tickets for,
her expectations hovering everywhere –
without them, I’d be so awfully free.
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so we get up early and walk:
the soles of our feet on the shell-shard beach
hurting just the right amount.
We drink too many cocktails.
I let her kiss my curls the same as hers
like I’m still five. We build sandcastles
with my daughter, as far
from the claws of the tide as we can,
as deep-moated as we can,
as tall in their armor of shells as we can,
knowing we will wake to not even a trace of turret.
My mother is here, and might not have been,
so we do it all over again.
Stephanie Feeney was born in Louisiana and raised in Texas and now lives in Suffolk. IS&T was her very first publication in 2021 – a poem called ‘The Brief Invisibility of Fathers’. It will appear in her debut collection which is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books.