Poems About Family

My mother carried me before I was a person. Carried me in the dark of her own body.

The strangest part is the ordinary: how the fridge still hums its one note, how the bills arrive

My grandmother's hands were a map of everywhere she'd been.

You never asked for a day. That's the most father thing about you.

You are leaving. I know this the way I know weather— not from the forecast

We shared a room for sixteen years and I still don't know your favorite color.

My grandmother's kitchen had no recipe book. She measured everything

My mother's hands could find a fever through a forehead, could tell a melon's ripeness

My sister knows the password to every secret I've owned since 1996,

He's not the one she imagined. She imagined someone with a plan.

There was a morning— I don't remember which one— when you walked into the kitchen and I looked up.

My father's chair still faces the window where he watched the street as if expecting a delivery

The score doesn't matter. I know it does. I know there are people who will read that sentence and close the poem.

My grandfather could fix anything. The toaster. The fence.

My grandmother's kitchen smelled like a country that no longer exists.

We have a language that no one else speaks.

You came first. Four minutes. That's all it took for you to claim the title of oldest.

He doesn't talk about it. This is how you know.

Children don't walk anywhere. They haven't learned the adult art of getting from one place to another

My father's workshop smelled of pine and something electrical— the ozone ghost of a drill

It's not the presents. I know it's not the presents because the best Christmas I ever had was the year we couldn't afford them.

The windows fog with everything we've made— the stew, the bread, the kettle's weary sigh— and past the glass the garden starts to fade