She asks if I’d ever seen the moon from a factory window.

In the kitchen I find her last cigarette unsmoked. I light it. Hold the ember close to my wrist—not touching, just close enough to feel what heat becomes before it’s pain.

SAME MOON BY PHILLIP SHABAZZ 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 135

My mother speaks in fragments, not a puzzle to piece together

but the kind that lands sharp. They settle into the bone-ache

of her swollen ankles. I watch her cry on the back steps,

one shoe slipping off her heel. Her fingers are a vise on a cigarette

pooling a cloud of smoke that is all the air on her face.

I forget the bottle on the porch she turned her back on.

I forget my estranged father, now just an empty chair.

She looks up and asks if I’d ever seen the moon from a factory window.