she came up to me, asking for
a chance
to chat in private
said I looked like the kind of person who
could help
she said she was looking for her daughter,
given up on
July 4, 1967
or perhaps, even
taken by nuns
not one day had passed without thinking of
her baby,
barely, even a
moment
she had no way of knowing that
I was adopted, & wondered
often about the woman who
gave birth to me
or that my research concluded at her grave,
years after her
heart stopped in the middle of a June night
a regular Wednesday took my birth mother out
but, somehow
a Friday night, which wasn’t very regular at all,
brought her back
or at least,
that’s how I remember it
Christine Brooks is a graduate of Western New England University with her B.A. in Literature and her M.F.A. from Bay Path University in Creative Nonfiction. Her poem, the price, is in the October issue of The Cabinet of Heed and her poems, life and I Don’t Believe, are in the fall issue of Door Is a Jar. Two poems, friends and demons are in the January 2020 issue of Cathexis Northwest Press and her poem, communion, is in the January 2020 issue of Pub House Books. Her book of poems, The Cigar Box Poems, was released in February 2020.
The Cabinet of Heed 