When a baby is born, she carries
her mother’s cells in her body.
These cells are few and may
not stay long, or they might
lodge in tissue, a kind of orphan.
But a mother can carry her baby’s
cells for decades, and that’s how
I imagine it was with us. Separated
by a distance that therapy and wine
never closed, we were still together.
If what they say is true, I was there
with you all those empty, lonely years—
even when we thought you had
abandoned me. Me, an organ dweller,
maybe in your liver or, maybe, your heart.
My cells are no longer in your body.
Your body no longer exists, except
in small shards of burnt bone.
Maybe your cells still live in me;
maybe it’s you I see in the mirror.
–
Marissa Glover lives in Florida, where she’s busy swatting bugs and dodging storms. Her poetry collections, Let Go of the Hands You Hold (2021) and Box Office Gospel (2023), are published by Mercer University Press. Recent work can be read at the Lascaux Review, The Opiate, and Whale Road Review. Follow Marissa on social at _MarissaGlover_.
© 2025, Marissa Glover
Halfway Down the Stairs 