Vine Maple
POETRY
by Tina Blade
I remember when Mom asked me just before she died,
Tina, was I a good mother? This small-town girl
who loved dancing and mink—asked me as if she didn’t know.
The vine maple at the window leaned in and touched the glass.
I was thinking. I was thinking You were not a good mother.
I didn’t know she was brave to ask. I didn’t know she’d missed me.
The vine maple at the window leaned in, its thin branches
lifted, graceful as the arms of a girl.
I refused to think she was brave. I didn’t know I’d miss her.
I hated what I remembered: her brandy, her dancing, the smell of her cigarettes,
the branches reaching—for her or for me? Whose arms? Which girl?
I knew the dry sound in the afternoon of the liquor cabinet opening.
I hated her drinking, her dancing, her cigarettes. I loved
the smell of her Joy perfume. How might she be different if she didn’t drink?
I listened for the click of the liquor cabinet opening.
I prayed for the day that door would stay shut.
How would I be different if she didn’t drink?
Was I a good mother? she asked at the very last minute,
the cabinet door forever opening and closing.
This small-town girl asking me as if I of all people would know.
Tina Blade lives in Duvall, Washington, just east of Seattle in the Snoqualmie River Valley. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon. Her work has appeared in Sweet Tree Review, Mid-American Review, The Moth, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Pontoon Poetry, Calyx, Menacing Hedge, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on her chapbook, Broken Blue Egg.
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