Cori Howard
every moment now is the last
the last soccer game
the last spring break
the last time I drive him to school
i can’t
stop
crying
he leaves the way he came
slowly, painfully
my cells morphing from mother to crone
my DNA rearranging
now, i wander through afternoons
an anthropologist
searching for clues
in stray socks and dusty corners
the house feels different
the way it did when I came home from the hospital
a new baby in my arms
now it feels as though a filter has been drawn
and I am shut out
on the other side of happiness
now, I have only an empty room
occasional texts
the ghost of him
laughing on the phone
singing in the shower
shouting - Mom - down the stairs
overnight
he becomes a stranger
the state of his heart his own
while here I am
unbirthing
unbecoming
a new helix of woman
Cori Howard
Cori Howard is a Canadian writer grateful to be living and working in Vancouver, BC, on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Peoples. Cori has been published in major publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Real Simple Magazine, Huffington Post, Maclean’s, Chatelaine, Reader’s Digest, Conde Nast Traveler, and The Independent, among others. She was a staff reporter for The National Post and spent many years as a producer and reporter for CBC Television and Radio in both Washington, DC and Vancouver. She has lived in Costa Rica and in Chile as a foreign correspondent. She has published a best-selling anthology Between Interruptions: Thirty Women Tell the Truth about Motherhood, which to this day continues to connect and inspire mothers.