Clara Burghelea

Dear mother,

Dying always looks like something else.
At my desk, I cut off the tags from your skin
to wash and dry before rolling it up my legs,
hips, all the way to the neck, cupping breasts
to fit them inside the pliable texture, the right
one slightly rounder, a twin search for consent.
I imagine your eyes measuring the whole of it,
your smile soaring head to toes, the cushioned
give of your touch on my face, before my mouth
becomes yours. All these poems boiling under
my tongue will out, fleshing every little shadow.

Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her collection The Flavor of The Other was published in 2020 with Dos Madres Press.