The only story I ever believed in was my own.
The only disguise I took was an old hag, crone-breathed
and foul, and now it has abducted me. When I leave

my gowns and veils I turn into what  I blithely imitated.
I am fully realized.  I am a daughter traveling the fires,
I am a mother redeeming myself in corn. I have become

my own story, I left it and pieced it together as it needed
us to change. I was the victim of rape. I was lusted after,
blackmailed, left for dead.  As a daughter roaming

the world, I wept for a mother sorely missed, raising
the flowers as she had, never leaving a city window
unadorned, without a box full of geraniums to tend. 

I was a mother forsaken, I searched for her among the starfish,
behind the sandy dunes all the way to Provincetown
and back. This earth has no use for mysteries. When I finally

caught her in my arms, a butterfly needing no net, I bargained
with the lilacs, the heart-shaped leaves, the bees to let her
be mine, be me, grow up safe. Oh, but you will know

the end to this story. Winter was waiting for us as certain 
as each wishing star would tumble, would hide itself away
from our greedy eyes.  She was borrowed, same as I was

to make this tale complete. After all that heartache,
after searching the world for each other, it was another
apple that tempted her, not the one Eve took, but one

all women share in the end. It was the one that stains
our mouths red, that bruises our lips like love. Why shock
you with the details of my own failures? Why confuse 

your mind with bestiality, how I sucked sweet water
in a cave.  Food and drink are all we need to survive.
Children are hungry, mothers we feed them.

We suckle them to our breasts, crush rocks into diamonds
along the Milky Way. Our futures are emblazoned in
winter stars. All that tension, all that explosive passion.

I am old. I am young.  I am her story, I am mine. I tell you this
tale my way, not hers, I can never tell it to you perfectly
or repeat it exactly the same. We are equal, through

different eyes. Tonight, I shall read to her from this journal
and tomorrow she will read it back from hers to me. Spring
will one day return for us, this is our only guarantee.