"Becoming Small"

I saved your hand-made terry pink sleeper from 36 years ago, you the child I had no name for. Your sleeper, washed, tucked away, waiting the day you would go. I watched you from afar at eighteen, blue jeans, arms laden with college books, ponytail swinging; you only turned once to wave. Then gone. To your dorm, your new home. Last child. Not really gone, as I mother-on. Checking behind you, nudging you along. Have you started a Roth IRA? Are the children registered for camp? Do you have enough money? Will you or I ever say a real goodbye?

Carolyn Cecil writes from Baltimore, Maryland. Her chapbook, "Taken Away," was published by the Broadkill Press. Her poems have been in The Broadkill Review, Backbone Mountain Review, Free Sate Review, Loyalhanna Review, Gunpowder Review among others. She is a member of the Ligonier Valley Writers and the Burlington Writers Workshop and has attended Johnson Studio Center in Vermont.