Unmoored From a Mother

564
Unmoored From a Mother by Aydia Caplan - Photo by Lydia Miller

Through the glass of a stranger’s window,
You look out on a reprising world.
The city rains back onto itself.
A forgotten melody from your infancy
Trails from the curtain.
It no longer lives between your mother’s lips
But you meet its timbre again
In the feathery sound of rain.

You walk downstairs in sotto voce and open the front door:
The city smells of thirst and untethered sidewalks.
You are lost. You turn at every corner.
You walk along a stranger’s welling streets
As your mother walked before you, and you are lost.

The drizzle beads like goosebumps on your skin.
It feels like suffusion, but only trills along the surface.
The rain rains back onto itself again.

You are lost, you are lost.

Through the treble-shivering glass of a stranger’s eyes,
You look out on a key-changed world.
You walk, trilling the surface of the city,
As your mother walked before you and was also lost
And you think of all the ways
A person could die.

What do you think about this topic? We want to hear from you!
Join the conversation!
Aydia Caplan is a senior at George Washington High School in Denver, Colorado. You can usually find her at her sprawlingly cluttered desk, listening to alternative rock, and giving a blank piece of paper an equally blank stare as she tries to fill it with hope alone.
Accompanying photo: “Dew” by Lydia Miller