Windborne
My mother sent me away when she made me tender, past budbreak she ripened me until my anemochory; my endosperm swollenpressed around my shy cotyledons, tucked away inside mother’s ovule my coat
she papier-mâchéd me tremblewings from her own hardened tissues and brushed my plumule, feathered worried, as the moons changed above and I grew heavy hung and greened
My siblings and I all share a birthday scattered in the rustling we scream past one another
out of control
our tall mothers look on, crying their children from silver-slivered wombs; they hold one another as they let us go
I feel my mother’s absence like a phantom limb. I spin, searching. My hilum is pitted with the ghost of her
There are mothers around me, branches softwhisper in cool nights mourning rockstarved children born by the same wind that wished them into being when they quivered now buries their wombstones unashamed
Meghan Barrett is currently a graduate student at Drexel University, working towards a Ph.D. in Biology. Meghan hails from Rochester, NY and is greatly inspired by the ecology of the upstate NY area. Her writing has previously appeared in Gandy Dancer, Mind Murals, and MiNT magazines and is forthcoming in The Trumpeter and Firefly magazines.