I laid my lifelong imprint beneath layers
of his fishable memories, those that included
a Hershey bar at age 3, perhaps, galoshes stuck
in mud, a carousel pony. Images surfacing
throughout his teens when writing school essays
or during night awakenings or when facing a therapist
who helps him explore why he hates leaving
the embrace of a shower, the arrival of his own
birthday, or waiting in doorways for a ride.
My faint soapy citrus smell mixed with perspiration
remains embedded in his cerebral folds while
well-meaning adults sketch, fashion, spoon-feed
the same scripted stories intended to shape him
away from me, that early history everybody rewrites.
Yet his first five minutes will always be mine.
I held my baby first.
Shoshauna Shy is the founder of Woodrow Hall Editions and the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. Her poems have been made into videos, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses. Not a monogamous writer, she works on 7-11 pieces at the same time. She is also a fiction author—but that’s a whole ‘nother story!