Spring 2023 Featured Work – Sarah Mae Afriam

Sarah Mae Afriam

Portal Through my Mother’s Body
 

My anger makes a myth of my mother
  for so many years while she is still alive
  that I waste time we could spend together
  refusing to talk to her instead.

I keep
my distance
states away.
I mock her distinct
voice, half singing, half
sad. I tell traumatic stories
as though that is all there is
to her:
trauma that begot
 trauma / trauma
that took the spiral route
through her body, through her life
and into mine / the corkscrew
of her trauma
the sacred symbol
of in & out, around, in between,
core to atmosphere, infinite
and in perpetual
motion.
I don’t yet
understand

there is a clock
                on our time together;
                that I will step through a series of moments
                that end as she dies looking into my eyes –
that there will be a new before and after,
                a new liminal space that opens
                like a mouth in the center of my life
                and just starts swallowing.