From the moment of conception

I’ve been thickening.

Body, skin, heart congealing. A holy process,

motherhood condensed the chatty tomboy

who never raised her hand

into its mold, as it did my mother before me:

wide waist, sagging breasts,

a shushing voice with

a tolerance for joyful shrieking,

a sensitivity for footsteps in the night,

an intuition for unspoken requests.

We mothers ossify into single-purpose creatures

hardened for this ancient purpose

that keeps the world running.

What will happen to us

when we, such brittle things,

must reshape ourselves again,

when the nighttime cries are gone,

when we type a text and erase it,

type and erase because we don’t want

to be a bother?

I think of my own mother,

how she beat and forged herself into

a shield for me,

how her skin has become like dandelion fluff

and a layer of dust now covers her dining room table.