CWI June 2019 Winner

When My Mother Was a Giantess

Avra Margariti

 

She let me sit on her shoulders,

fed me spotted eggs

plucked fresh from mountaintop nests,

flew me like a girl-plane through the clouds

to gather their moisture on my tongue.

 

When she got sick, she shrank and sank

while I underwent a stretching metamorphosis,

all 206 of my bones a stranger in my body.

I carried her from bed to couch and back again,

spoon-fed her oatmeal and chamomile tea.

I tried to remind her of the times I rode on her shoulders

and she on the shoulders of the world,

soaring through wind and cloud.

 

In the end, a mechanical ventilator had to pump air

into her lungs.

Now, she’s a giantess in the clouds,

a shape I can trace with my finger

against the sky.

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