For Terry Lyn Hines (1959-2012)

My first and most enduring example of the power of radical love.

My Mother's Belly

The bread of her waist, a loaf

I would knead with eight-year-old palms

sweaty from play. My brother and I marveled

at the ridges and grooves. How they would summit at her navel.

How her belly looked like a walnut. How we were once seeds

that resided inside. We giggled, my brother and I,

when she would recline on the couch,

lift her shirt, let her belly spread like cake batter in a pan.

It was as much a treat as licking the sweet from electric mixers on birthdays.

The undulating of my mother's belly was not

a shame she hid from her children.

She knew we came from this. Her belly was a gift

we kept passing between us.

It was both hers, of her body,

and ours for having made it new,

different. Her belly was an altar of flesh

built in remembrance of us, by us.

What remains of my mother's belly

resides in a container of ashes I keep in a closet.

Every once and again, I open the box,

sift through the fine crystals with palms

that were once eight. Feel the grooves and ridges

that do not summit now but rill through fingers.

Granules so much more salt

than sweet today. And yet, still I marvel

at her once body. Even in this form say,

"I came from this."