My Mother

Your womb described my earliest space--
Terse measure in pulses of our one blood,
The flow and turning of my fetal days.

I took from you more than shape of chin,
Span of bone, a cast of shadow in the eyes,
Accents of your speech, tone of tour skin.

It was your law whipped my conscience
Recalcitrant as hair loose in a wild wind
To strict conformity and terrible obedience.

Your unrepentant fears cower inside me
Shivering their dread of birth, danger
Ancient as the grave's wait for its fee.

It is your shelter I had yearned to fly,
Startling to the doom written in the blood,
The statement of our common destiny.

Watching you now inside this shrunken room,
Your skin a loose bag over your brittle bones,
I think how flight would only bring me home.