Her tenacious curiosity
finds an electrical socket
blackens her delicate fingertips.
At seven, her teacher calls to say —
she’s stolen Fruit Roll-Ups
from a classmate’s backpack.
My time-out sanctions create
a cackling crescendo:
I hate you, I want a new mom —
from behind her bedroom door.
Each passing year —
I gather new transgressions
fumble in the darkness
of motherhood
grapple with aversion
to adolescent tattoos & piercings
F-bombs flung
at my it’s for your own good!
When she sneaks out to a forbidden party
I take her door from its hinges —
its return a Christmas present,
the only item on her wish list.
At sixteen the phone rings
an hour past curfew —
she’s rolled her ’79 Mustang in the ditch.
I arrive to headlights
beaming through the night sky
upside down engine still running
her first car never even makes it
home from the lot —
I spare scolding overlook the heap
of crumpled metal feel the heat of her
life flashing before my teary eyes.
Brenda Sciberras is a Winnipeg writer who has been published in several Canadian literary journals as well in the anthology Across Sections: New Manitoba Writing (Manitoba Writer’s Guild, 2007). Her work is also forthcoming in the anthology I Found It at the Movies, which will be published by Guernica Editions in fall 2014. Her first poetry collection, Magpie Days, will be launched by Turnstone Press also in the fall.
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