Matrophobia
        For A. & G. & B. & J. & J. & J.

My friend says if I'm afraid of becoming my mother,
I should work on my relationships. We've confessed
the darkness of our parents' minds has startled out

of hiding, a fire eel insinuating the black ribbon of
its body against the tank's green murk. In a dim bar
in a wet city we whisper and sip a sparkling rosé,

spooning lamb soup from floral teacups. Strong connections
safeguard mental health, she says, so I tell that to a new friend
under fake ivy vines laced with Christmas lights as we eat

chocolate sheet cake, amputated congratulations piped
bright on the frosting. He and I have only met twice
but joke we're lifelong friends so I can say I am not

my mother. I give him my number, I want more friends
to protect me from the ghost in my genes, and he texts
Every connection is a prayer against loneliness because he'd said

it in person, voice soft as ink, and I didn't want to forget.
My love texts The blackness of space glows in the microwave.
Desire leafs in me like burnt paper, warm stain on my fingers.

I write back that I'm coming home and what I want to do
To him when I get there and send it to a friend on accident.
She says she's flattered but knows the message isn't for her.

I feel closer to her because she lets me make mistakes.
The bar walls absorb night like a pupil, and my best friend
says I shouldn't deny people the dignity of their consequences.

But my mother taught me love has a sufferer and a witness.
Another friend says her body is rejecting the cadaver bone
in her finger. I take the hand that's not holding the cabernet.

My thumb on her thumb. A fierce gentleness. I feel the inherited
dark retreating but alert, the black gasping against the love like
the inside of a child's mouth after a mother delivers it.

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Copyright © 2020 Traci Brimhall All rights reserved
from Iron Horse Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission