Alexis Groulx: Elegy for the Girl

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Elegy for the girl at parent pick-up who asked me if I was Sophia's mom

I am nobody's mother.

& though I want to tell you this,
you are too small for such things. So
I bend down, admiring the way your princess shoes
light up, picking a stick from between your velcro straps.

Your mother looking on from the school's railing.
You know what Sophia's mommy looks like, sweetie."
Blinking her pretty eyelashes at the stranger

pulling debris from her daughter’s shoe

& we both smile at the unapologetic ways of children.

& as I continue to the back of this giant brick building —
statues of the Virgin Mary seem to pray for me near the door
where soon my nephew will come out, into the cold
waving at me, smiling. & I think of the mother I could have been.

My daughter and nephew side by side would be the same age now.

But when I find my nephew's face among the dozens
of other school children, suddenly
there is nothing
but us. The way his smile shows his missing two front teeth—

the smell of blueberry hand sanitizer, that he keeps in his backpack
"for germs, Al" as if I don't know
the dangers of the cold.

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Alexis Groulx’s work has been previously published, or is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Review, Bridge Eight, Civil Coping Mechanisms, Gravel, Off the Coast, Sun & Sandstone, The Missing Slate, and others. She is currently an MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts.