"Mother’s Dilemma" by Christine Degenaars

This is a selection from our Summer 2023 issue, “Stay,” currently available in print and digital versions.

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I come home with a candle tucked
in my purse. Jake’s in the kitchen,

he looks up. I say, all this might be worse
with a daughter. SoHo, where I just was,

is so crowded with money, there’d be
no place for empty bottles, a stray sock,

which I know my baby, whoever she is,
would slip from her little foot, leave discarded

on a subway grate. Would a passing train
raise it up like an autumn leaf—would we

find it? Is this what we want:
a daughter gamboling between

sport coats, stiff-tongued shoes, caverned
and clacking; for her to treat men

like rocks on a jetty—don’t slip, step
around them, say excuse me—always

both a part and apart from them?
Is there a love we couldn’t have

without her? We talk, watch the news,
light the candle. Everything flickers cobalt

or gold against the long stretch of blank wall.
He rests his head on my stomach,

listens for active limbs, that eager,
kicking foot. There’s nothing in me now

or yet. We haven’t decided. Yet
still, I sting for something as I lie

beside him. What it is, we are
too tired to dream.

Christine Degenaars has work published or forthcoming in Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Nimrod International Journal, Bear Review, Cider Press Review, & elsewhere. In 2022, she was selected as a semi-finalist in the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest. She is the recipient of the 2020 & 2021 Colie Hoffman Prize in Poetry and the Bishop Kelleher Award. She graduated from Hunter College with a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry. She lives in New York. Find more of her work at christinedegenaars.com.