I am learning to move my hips

in rhythms left for me by Danu

Danu the first mother, about whom we remember little

excepting her motherhood

when I die, a stone somewhere will mark me mother

and perhaps nothing more of me will remain

I step into frigid rivers

to raise bumps on my skin, to remember I exist at all

I call out to the clouds

shapeshifting above my head

a shrill plea that someone, anyone, will see me here

but it is the cries of my children

which turns stranger heads toward me

and not my dancing body leaving the running waters

undulating in directions it never dreamed of going

before, and fish scatter knowing I never

held them as an egg within my womb

but also knowing I am not the one

who would slit their bellies, spilling their

babies, eating caviar—

they don’t swim far; mothers' seen

___

KIANA McCRACKIN is a writer, a photographer (with a BFA from The Brooks Institute of Photography), a cloud gazer, and a mama. Kiana is eternally inspired by the emotions of the human experience and the landscapes she has called home; Alaska, California, and Washington. She currently resides in South Dakota where she is learning what the wind has to say and translating what the trees tell her.