![\"\"](\"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/20191029_193158-300x169.jpg\")
<\/p>\nprompt 14 hour 14<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
all my Mothers<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe land knows, you even when you are lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
and I was so lost<\/p>\n
so very lost that summer \u2013<\/p>\n
the summer after she was gone<\/p>\n
and we brought her home;<\/p>\n
dad and I.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
truthfully,<\/p>\n
I was lost before then even<\/p>\n
when the burrs would get stuck in my hair \u2013<\/p>\n
after fucking for love<\/p>\n
and face<\/p>\n
in the back field<\/p>\n
on the dry Earth<\/p>\n
on grasses more brittle than my self respect.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She knew me then<\/p>\n
before I could see me.<\/p>\n
she knew me then<\/p>\n
held my wounded heart,<\/p>\n
broken soul,<\/p>\n
in both hands<\/p>\n
holding me together<\/p>\n
until I could remember me, too.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
truthfully,<\/p>\n
I thought I knew better later<\/p>\n
when I thought I knew better than my mother<\/p>\n
forgotten to me piece by piece<\/p>\n
of my wounded heart,<\/p>\n
broken soul<\/p>\n
under the weight of bottles<\/p>\n
too heavy to hold anymore<\/p>\n
in my shaking fists.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
this land refused to hold her<\/p>\n
with this flood of forgetting the story of<\/p>\n
who brought whom into the world in the first place.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She knew me then \u2013<\/p>\n
this land I loved \u2013<\/p>\n
when I took my mother\u2019s ashes where we would skate together<\/p>\n
on frozen, bumpy pond water<\/p>\n
snapping beneath the surface<\/p>\n
like my longing to piece it all back together:<\/p>\n
-her fragments in the pill bottles we carried her in, to the places we left her<\/p>\n
-the days before her despair when we could laugh and heal<\/p>\n
-my broken treaty with the places I loved, who loved me back when my mother couldn\u2019t<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cthe land knows you, even when you are lost,\u201d
\nand I have been lost,<\/p>\n
only remembering myself back to life<\/p>\n
because She remembered me,<\/p>\n
until I could find my way back to all my Mothers.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 r. l. elke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
prompt 14 hour 14 all my Mothers \u201cThe land knows, you even when you are lost.\u201d and I was so lost so very lost that summer \u2013 the summer after she was gone and we brought her home; dad and I. truthfully, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":712,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/712"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73170,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73141\/revisions\/73170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}