BRIONNE JANAE Momma

BRIONNE JANAE

Momma

you wish you had known her before your father imagine her a young lush cheeked child with ribbons in her hair

in your favorite picture from before she is a teen dressed all in white— one hand on her hip the other at the knee

her ass pushed up and out and on her lips a pout that says I’m cute but complicated she is standing on your grandparent’s lawn

back when it was still framed by those tall slender trees Mo used to wrap in tinfoil and Christmas red ribbon the grass is a tender lime green the way Pa likes it

even then he made time to care for small things when you told her you were in therapy Momma said my parents were so happy

you like to picture her childhood she the youngest of seven it must’ve been ordered but loud in the best way

you can imagine how they must have orbited her bought her sweet treats taught her silly unimportant things like how to jump rope throw down at dominoes and curl her bangs

in that big eighties way yes you would have liked to see her then to know what it is to dance around your mother to be bathed in simply easy joy