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MacQueen’s Quinterly: Knock-your-socks-off Art and Literature
Issue 26: 1 Jan. 2025
Haibun: 139 words
By Tracy Royce

My 86-Year-Old Mother Asks
About Her Newborn Babies

 

“How are my little ones?” she says, and I know that today I will fail a test with no correct answers. “They’re fine, don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’m taking care of them for you.” Her brow furrows as she demands, “How many are there?”

Decades after her hysterectomy, Mom’s mind birthed a baby girl. Soon, a second emerged. After my third imaginary sibling squalled her way into existence, the size of my mother’s new brood changed daily.

As her only real daughter, it is now my role to guess how many infant sisters Mom thinks I’m tending, then soothe her when she declares I’m wrong. I am always wrong. I take a deep breath and pick a number between 1 and 3.

Mom’s 
	 dementia 

wish-
	ing 
   I 
     too 
  could 
	  forget 
Tracy Royce
Issue 26 (January 2025)

is a poet and writer. Her work has appeared in 50-Word Stories, Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work, contemporary haibun online, failed haiku, The Fat Studies Reader, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking in the region’s many mountains and wrangling her adorably mischievous rabbit.

 
 
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