Summer 2021 I fear my daughters will only remember me as the mother with cold hands— not the mother whose belly they strained to distinction. I was not the mother who slapped the Lakota clean out their mouth with a, Skin color don’t mean nothing anyway. We born in America, we all Native Americans. I was not even the Kokum with shorn braids who slipped Cheerios and soap between lips puckered tight as their birth father’s fists.
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But I was the mother who cleared the eczema with dollar store jars of Vaseline, bootleg bear grease, and spruce salve. I was the mother who pressed good dreams into eyelids, oneirologist conjuring sweet fantasies exploding through darkness. I am the mother who did stay, who could remain, who packs in the hurt and kneads it into my own.