Today's poem is On the Night of My Mother's Disappearance. It is read by Julia Bouwsma.
On the Night of My Mother's Disappearance
At the dance, I watched as the other girls
were peeled from their places along
the wall by boys whose new power jangled
in their pockets like fresh-minted coins.
I stared straight ahead as my not-chosen-ness
became more and more conspicuous,
the wish-to-be-visible morphing into
the wish-to-be-invisible, which is
the wish-to-not-exist awakening—
a wish with a grip strong enough
to open a bottle's lid and the hunger
to swallow everything inside.
As I leaned against the wall of the darkened
gymnasium, my mother sat on the edge
of a hotel bed, dropping pills down the well
of her throat, wishing herself out of her body.
What a strange inheritance, this not-enoughness,
this auctioneer's call—will ya give me,
will ya give me, will ya give me,
going once, going twice,
gone.