i.  
It started as many good things do, with

a pan, some butter, onion and garlic.

Then somewhere there, a transubstantiation.

Eyes misty, onion’s revenge. Hours and

salt passed. I realise I don’t recall 
when I learned to chop an onion.

A blur, of kitchen steam, as I waft

in mother’s shadow. Absorbing knowledge,

nutrients, guilt—my body should be wafer

shaped and my blood somehow pristine.
Now, my own shadow is empty. Like my belly. 
ii.
I am a flat earther of motherhood, the line of

my genetic horizon, precipitous. Somewhere

in the windowed distance, chance recedes like

the Honeyeaters. A winged cloud above the city,

en route to sweeter climes. A warmth that feels 
a fiction. A postcard, read under a different zone

of the sun. I stand, coffee cradled, at the sink edge

of our imagined children—the Jewish-line, cut

by my Pagan womb. What would the grand matriarch

of your family make of me. She who escaped 
gas to live on. I’m awkward at Friday dinners,

the kiddush a stutter in my wool lined mouth.

The sticky wine helps, the challah another familiar

anchor on the tongue. The bustle of plates

and over-catered courses too. Many of Gran’s 
dishes still gift her family life. Your stubborn brow,

arrow headed conviction, another living portrait.

I suspect this would flow through, if, we…

The pitter-patter of our what-ifs, foreign still

like the rhythm of glottal punctuated prayer.  
I’ll ask for her recipes soon, make them here.            
iii.
I marvel that I once was pressed daily,

hourly to your skin. Several teeth in my

now crowded gums, were once the milk

I blindly sought. You fed me, gave of your

bones freely without knowing who I would be. 
The same breasts that poured life into

all our veins, twice tried to rob yours

away. Your own mother suffered

the same fate, only she didn’t get that

second chance. Another foreign matriarch 
I had to meet through the folds of

memory. Darned into mended socks,

served with dowry cutlery. I have the

same hips—did not inherit the maternal

chest though. Junior burger to their Big 
Mac, my sisters would tease. A sting

not dissimilar to my teen mosquito bites.

Today, though, it makes sense as I watch

them rear their own daughters. Feed them

in a way I cannot. My body isn’t a bottle 
but it is a ladle. I keep these women alive.