What I Wanted My Mother to Say to Me as She Lay Dying

That in the beginning
I was a little bird
but I was not hers,
that I should listen
to her anyway—
that I should not wait
to breathe in daffodils,
that I should listen
to the sky, for it tells
me to slip off my shame
at the seashore,
that I do not have to fear
the darkening evening,
that its clouds in carnation
shapes smile with me
while my feet
leave patterns on the sand,
that the pepper night
asks me to open
windows,
that I will want to remember
to tell my daughters it is alright
to let the sad moonlight
fly with them and paint
the trees blue.

Natalie Marino is a poet, physician, and mother. Her work appears in Barren Magazine, Bitter Oleander, EcoTheo Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Literary Mama, Midway Journal, Moria Online, Oyez Review, and elsewhere. Her micro-chapbook, Attachment Theory was published by Ghost City Press in June 2021. She lives in California.

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