My mother, with her long, ringless fingers, couldn’t
knot the slippery gizzards to the fishing twine, but she tried.
Still, I blamed her. For not being like the other mothers
who bought hot dogs from the Albertson’s,
sliced them in neat rounds, strung them to the lines
of real fishing poles, studded like pink-boiled beads
dunked into the dirty creek. The crawdads scurried,
swished up silt to seize those lures, appearing
eager to be stolen from their homes. Airlifted, plopped
into a bucket. Those mothers knew how to trap
innocent creatures. Those mothers put stickered notes
in their daughters’ lunch sacks, baked cakes that weren’t born
from a box. But I turned out fine. Taught myself
how to cook, how to bake bread from scratch. Last month,
I separated six yolks from their whites, the gold orbs cold
in my palms. My mother, in from out of town, peered
into the pile, saying, I can see myself in your eggs!
I leaned over to see, and the convex portraits
multiplied. A brood appeared. A hive comprised
of her and me and me and her and her and me.
