FAMILY POEM 

by Emily Goldsmith

 

I am eating catfish / It is Friday during Lent and I eat catfish / My nieces are bickering nearby / The youngest believes her sister stole her fool’s gold / She frowns / Her sister runs off / She remembers a funny video and shows my husband / She tells me about her Summer spent at the beach two years ago / She proclaims with distaste and seagulls ate my goldfish / I learn that she was born on the winter solstice / during a lunar eclipse /  with a birthmark on her chin / Her oldest sister tells me / if she’d been born in the late 1600s / she would’ve been strapped to a stake and lit on fire / She smirks / Recalling births / My mother-in-law tells me that my husband could’ve been born a girl / My sister-in-law wanted a sister / She cried desperately when his birth was announced / I wonder if I would still find my husband if she was known to the world as a woman / In an alternate universe / she is a woman / I find her and love her the same / We eat catfish on lent / Our nieces bicker