Elizabeth,
Mother of my mother, her knotted knuckles cradled
my scraped elbows, the heaviness of my childhood
heart. Her beauty unrepeatable, blistering. She stands
hunched over the sink, peeling potatoes, buttering bread,
in the yellow light of the pre-war kitchen she is ageless.
When I think of home, I think of her,
kindness dripping from her embrace like honey.
The wrinkles of her cheeks soft, like crushed velvet.
We are the same faux rose in a dusty, crystal vase.
I am cut from the long sinews of her arms,
I am stitched together with her veins.
The treble of my voice is the child of her voice,
that timeless, velvet rasp.
Author Bio: Layla Lenhardt
Layla Lenhardt is Editor in Chief of 1932 Quarterly. She has been most recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Opiate, The Charleston Anvil, and Scars. Her forthcoming Poetry Book, These Ghosts are Mine is due for publication this fall. She currently resides in Indianapolis.