Patricia Aya Williams
Patricia Aya Williams is a Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize recipient and author of the mini-chap, Haiku for Parents. Her poems have appeared in several journals, including Santa Clara Review, The Good Life Review, Dunes Review, Jackdaw Review, and Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and she has work forthcoming in Whale Road Review, Caesura, and Cathexis Northwest Press. Her poetry and photography was featured as part of Front Porch Gallery’s 2024 exhibit, Journey of Life Through Vision and Verse. She lives in San Diego with her husband, Christopher, their dog, Binxy, and two houseplants, Isabella Yuki and Mimi Lise.
Somebody asks me if the bride is my daughter,
and I say I wish
because the bride is beautiful,
charming, and wouldn’t we all want a
daughter like that. Her hair,
effortless pixie, color of a rare black
fawn, her eyes a more
gregarious shade of
hazel than mine. Her arms
invite me in for a hug, and what is that scent…
jasmine? Sweet pea? I don’t
know her, my husband’s colleague’s daughter, but I would
like to. It won’t happen. My husband and I,
merely part of the scenery, the scene,
numbered and noted, catered to with
only the most exquisite organic hors d’oeuvres and a
pamplemousse wedding cake, which I have decided I am
quite fond of. We
resemble each other, she and I.
She could be my daughter, looks more like me
than her own mother.
Uncanny. I don’t have a daughter. I have a daughter and a son,
vanished. My husband’s children. They
want nothing to do with us,
“X” us out of their lives. Who knows why? I was
young once, cagey and righteous. Now I seal my secrets in
Ziploc bags, transparent and perishable.
