KAREN STROMBERG

Untitled

When my mother and I sat
on the edge of her bed
facing the mirrored closet doors
and she said "Who are we?"
it was not a metaphysical question.

Someone who loves you,
I said. She loved me too, she said
with her new-found sincerity–
a font of love which included all nurses
and the woman who bathed her.

Mother, she said, can I go home how?
I'm your daughter, I said
as we leaned together
on her old marriage bed
where my life began
and her's would end.

Karen Stromberg's poetry has recently appeared in Red River Review, Shot Glass Journal, Right Hand Pointing, San Diego Poetry Annual 2013-2014 and the anthology, Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's. She has an MA in Creative Writing--fiction.