In This Dream Everything Remains Inside
poems by Gilda Morina Syverson

We are childless when we haven’t given birth to something that haunts us. In This Dream Everything Remains Inside creates a bridge between the literary world and others who’ve experienced a time of childlessness. These poems were part of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Choice Chapbook Series.

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In Search of My Own Mother

A della Francesca luminescence
streams through the open door
of this dream. The kitchen back
at my parents’, the same light
that first day we moved in
forty years earlier. Only
my mother is missing.

My father, home from the shop,
hurries up the back stairway.
I press myself against the wall.
He rushes past me. I hang on
to the old brown phone hoping
my mother will call.

One by one, seven siblings
and their families appear.
I ask a brother if he’s seen
our mother.  He vanishes
and a sister flashes by.
I call out, ask
if she’s found Mother.

But she runs busy
from house to vehicle, carries
her children in.  In the basement,
nieces and nephews play games,
kickball, hide and seek.

I send them in search of Mother,
down Plymouth towards James Street.
In the distance, they form a circle,
light radiates from their center.
A reflection of my face appears.
A taller female figure rises.