I ran for it, her leg,
and clung to the green plaid
of her pants while she flipped
through boy’s shirts on a circular rack.
I’d been hiding beneath them.
Why did she not right away tell me
but let me, how much later,
look up to see the glasses,
the perfect blonde hair,
the whole Kmart kaleidoscoping
around the woman not at all
my mom. The shirts,
their sleeves hung so empty by.
I was found in the toothpaste aisle.
Perhaps I looked unchanged,
but that was the day I knew
I could lose her, my mother.
I followed her past the blue lights
to the checkout, still crying, no longer
the same girl who walked into the store,
not letting go of her hand.
Oh my. Another innocence shattered. Seemingly the same daughter on the outside, but storming and brewing quite another daughter, inside.
“Kmart kaleidoscoping.” Nice alliteration.
There’s a kind of intentional delaying of context at the start, not letting the reader figure out who you are until about halfway through the poem. I struggled a bit with orientation at first, but the poem clarifies nicely, sends me back to childhood.