The Decision
       

When I one early spring, bedspread yellowed parrots, lay
silent, listening, each day pooled in my chest as pneumonia,

as thaw flooding wild fields, & as each empty branch armored
itself with offshoots, I knew that dead or not I'd rise, as my

children's voices from a kitchen below or through a flung-
open window, & my daughter saying to someone taking better

care of them than I, I'll spend the whole rest of the day with Mama,
& the truth of it dunked my head into a bucket, & I sputtered

a first, clean breath. I'm here. I'm still here. & this happening,
this springing back, a mother who will live, is now. again.

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Copyright © 2019 Jenn Givhan All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission