"Barren" by Jeanine Walker

Barren

Like a pin prick puncturing a rising balloon, I wake
from another space — blue walls, a small window,
a block of light. Maybe she’s fallen: the child let go

of the swing’s chains and rode the momentum backwards.
She cries on the ground. I must go to her, lift her
to the body she came from and fold her into my arms.

But in the blue room, just light from the window.
This space, all dim angles and one small square of white.
I can’t see the yard. And the swing set? And my daughter?

And her hands indented with the shape of the chains,
her small body helpless, waiting for me to exist?
Her tiny living voice emerges in my consciousness

like an ancestor coming back, speaking, knowing I belong
to him. She belongs to me and cries out to tell me so. Claim me.
And then I wake, and remember — as if a fog rushed out —

that it is the cat, whom I had locked in the bathroom
last night so I could, for once, rest long and dream.
When I let her out, she comes right toward my body, purring,

wanting to sit with me and know where she belongs.
What vision the undisturbed sleep brings on.
I can see why, for years, I have let this animal wake me.

Jeanine Walker

Jeanine Walker has been recognized with grants from Artist Trust, Jack Straw Cultural Center, and Wonju, UNESCO City of Literature. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston and has published work in Chattahoochee Review, Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. Her full-length poetry collection is The Two of Them Might Outlast Me, out from Groundhog Poetry Press in late 2022. She teaches for Hugo House and Kangwon National University.

Headshot: Steve Mauer

Photo Credit: Staff