Mothers tie shoes. Tying shoes is a private cult ritual
between mothers and their offspring. Typically, if outdoors,
the child assumes a sitting position on the nearest large rock.
It must be a rock of immovable size though short enough
for a four-year-old to squat upon, her feet firmly planted
on the ground where the mother lifts them slightly,
one at a time, out of the grass and commences tying dirty white
laces. She is distracted in her task; it is, after all, ritual—
like a game of hide-and-seek or cutting up cheese for lunches.
She’s not a goddess—she’s mom, the woman bent over
in front of me fixing my shoe as a long green garter snake
emerges out of the ground, from under a rock, and slithers out
between my legs, a mere five to six inches from
my mother and my mother doesn’t move, keeps tying my shoe—
slipping a lace through a loop, spying the snake saying
how much it looks like the loop, laughing, making
an Oh of her mouth as a whole nest of babies
emerge from the rock—neolates, she says, then talks about
all sorts of other babies like chimps and pandas, and small
kangaroos that hide like these babies but in momma-pouches.
And we are both pointing and counting by now: seven, eight,
nine, ten. How small they are, like the green gummy worms
I ate just the other day, but my mom says we shouldn’t
eat the baby snakes because their momma would miss them
like I’d miss you, she says, and besides, we don’t want them to think
we would hurt them because we are so big and they are
so so small, and see how they hide in the grass? Yes momma, I say.
They do this, she says, because they are very afraid.
Kimberly Priest’s writing explores motherhood, abuse, religion, and sexual trauma, and her poetry has appeared in several journals including The 3288 Review, Ruminate Magazine, and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She earned her MFA from New England College, and her chapbook White Goat Black Sheep was published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press.