Camille Rivera
When I told my mother about the first girl I loved
and how it ended, her voice got caught in her throat.
It wasn’t just static over the phone line.
She was stunned at how she could still be needed
after all this time, by her first-born no less,
already in my twenties but crying
the way I did when she boarded a plane
to work in another country more than ten years ago.
After a failed marriage and numerous bank loans,
how do you tell your daughter
love is shutting the door of your house and leaving the keys,
knowing everything you hold dear is right behind it?
All she said was Darling,
we cry every time we are born.
