When My Mother Was a Giantess
Avra Margariti
She let me sit on her shoulders,
fed me spotted eggs
plucked fresh from mountaintop nests,
flew me like a girl-plane through the clouds
to gather their moisture on my tongue.
When she got sick, she shrank and sank
while I underwent a stretching metamorphosis,
all 206 of my bones a stranger in my body.
I carried her from bed to couch and back again,
spoon-fed her oatmeal and chamomile tea.
I tried to remind her of the times I rode on her shoulders
and she on the shoulders of the world,
soaring through wind and cloud.
In the end, a mechanical ventilator had to pump air
into her lungs.
Now, she’s a giantess in the clouds,
a shape I can trace with my finger
against the sky.