The Women Leave You with Children

A mother walks into the river, daughter

pressed to her chest. They say she cried

as she swam back to the shore, alone.

I know this love. The mother says there was

no room for her. Water clung to her

body like a child. The daughter moaned

as her mouth filled—a coda. In music

we call this a double return: Blues

in the making. In 1856 Margaret Garner

crossed the Ohio River, pregnant.

She loved her daughter to death.

What kind of love is that? The women

in the Spanish South did too. They birthed

children in oceans, springs, and rivers—

held them under, away from the men who used

their sons as gator bait and daughters as whores.

Red tide bleeds across the ocean;

somewhere a woman uses all her strength

to release a child she does not raise

above water.