Contributor: Susie Sweetland Garay

- -
On a Wednesday night after swim lessons
my mother and I sit together in a dimly lit room.
She tells me ugly truths about her childhood,

it is a thing I want to fix
but am unable.

There is much I cannot do
but I will try again after each failure.

As we talk we both think of
the baby sleeping in the next room
and how with each passing year
a family does better for its
next generations.


- - -
Susan Sweetland Garay lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter where she works in the vineyard industry and enjoys being a part time silversmith. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of journals, on line and in print, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014. Her first full length poetry collection, Approximate Tuesday, was published in 2013 and her second book Strange Beauty was published in 2015.