To Braid One's Hair Slowly [https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1081627664932159620/1148820475057815553/anti_pirate_graphic_-_walking_in_sky_-_poetry_vol_1_-_white.png]

Should we draw the faces of our mothers

or just the simple, pleated hem of their skirts?

No was always mistaken for yes

and this misbelieving weighted their bellies.

Most of the time they had when they'd rather have not

and they harvested themselves,

always making sure that guilt was baked in the bread,

that the crust was hard and the inside soft,

thinking again and again of tender bathings by Cassat.

They are remembered as mothering hands, wives' tales

and daughters under foot. Their faces were hard stones

first made shining and beautiful as they washed

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

into a timeless, forgetful sea.

Look at them and become their age,

become the calm of crookedly smiling marble

and swallow their fossil-crack stories whole.

They cry, slowly croon into their daughters' pink, shell ears:

Eat us and grow young.

I know they have longed to be seen

for too long and will settle for life

as an almost-spoken beginner's song.

I have woven it into my headstrong hair

with anemone crescendos and deep-water silences.

I keep ocean stones cradled in my hands

and look to their blank faces to guide me

when my own hard-cover knowledge binds me,

and keeps me from the charm of rock broken waves

and beauty that is harmful to see.

- Kat Isacson

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