Emily Patterson
Emily Patterson is a curriculum designer, poet, and mother in Columbus, Ohio. She holds a B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University, where she was awarded the Marie Drennan Prize for Poetry and F.L. Hunt Prize for Most Promising Creative Writer. She received her M.A. in Education from Ohio State University. Emily’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Literary Mama, Mothers Always Write, Thimble Literary Magazine, Quillkeepers Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Sunlight Press, The Magnolia Review, and elsewhere.
Womb
That night in Boulder you woke up
by the hour, the mountain air searing
a nasal edge into your cries. I held you
as you drifted into another brief span
of sleep—my own eyes full of sand,
my own heart working hard beneath
the Flatirons—until sometime around
three, when I turned on the shower,
took you into the steam that fogged
the mirror and blurred our reflections
in the half-dark. I held you as we pulled
the water-laden air into our mouths,
our bellies—leaning into its familiar
weight, the kind we were used to,
the kind we both knew from our
mothers’ bodies, our earliest nights.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 