Memory
I didn’t see my mother come home
from chemotherapy, crouching over the toilet
bowl, her shoulders heaving
as if with sobs. I was five. All
I remember is the dark
mass of her wig, strokeable as a cat.
I drew her face in ocher crayon,
her hair yellow, her eyes
yellow. She stayed at home,
always wearing her bathrobe, one sleeve
lightly frosted with cigarette burn.
She didn’t change. I was the one
who began to forget things. When I turned
twelve, I wrapped my Stayfree
maxis in layers of paper, buried them
under the rest of the trash. I thought no one
but me had ever bled like that.
Ellen Samuels has published poetry and creative nonfiction in a wide variety of journals, including Nimrod, Mid-American Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Rogue Agent, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, and in a chapbook, December Morning (Finishing Line Press, 2004). She has received two Lambda Literary Awards and a Pushcart nomination and teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
