Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment

By Sue Ellen Thompson
This is all I am to her now:
a pair of legs in running shoes,

two arms strung with braided wire.
She heaves a carton sagging with CDs 

at me and I accept it gladly, lifting
with my legs, not bending over,
    
raising each foot high enough
to clear the step. Fortunate to be 

of any use to her at all,
I wrestle, stooped and single-handed, 

with her mattress in the stairwell,
saying nothing as it pins me, 

sweating, to the wall. Vacuum cleaner,
spiny cactus, five-pound sacks 

of rice and lentils slumped
against my heart: up one flight 

of stairs and then another,
down again with nothing in my arms.

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, and reprinted from When She Named Fire, ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, and reprinted by permission of the poet and publisher.  First printed in The Golden Hour, Sue Ellen Thompson, Autumn House Press, 2006.
Source: 2006