The Missing Rib

I scan each face searching for the mark of Adam.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamt of grandmothers with soft hands hardened by the sun and eyes that betray the strong set of their jaws.

The oracle says they came with me: each one of my mothers’ sins standing in this line of wailing women not ready to be released. Butterflies in my stomach not keeping beat, forgetting their place.

And yet, there they stayed. Because I let them.

I cleared a space for them—carving out my own tender flesh—and gave them room to root.

They tended to themselves, this garden of mine. It never occurred to me to ask where the men were.

I scan each face searching for the mark of Adam.

I check their ribs and find nothing.