Julia Anna Morrison
Offspring
Off the winter highway, years later,
I apologize.
I had something to do with the separation
when you were a baby.
Filling the car with gas four hours from home.
I’ve forgotten for what exactly, but I am sorry.
You smile at me from the backseat window.
It’s cold here and my hands are frozen.
Your father in one world, your mother in another.
Your shoe in one house, your sock in the other.
All of that dreaming in two beds.
We go back and forth. We halve each other.
No wonder we believe so fiercely in magic and weather.
I teach you spells to reach me when I am not there.
You are doing the disappearing children do –
Off to school in your coat, or sleeping with the light off.
My stomach sounds like a phone ringing.
You’ve left your toy at your father’s house.
We arrive to get it, almost immediately.
We enter the room and stand there together.
Will half of me always want to stay here
Will half of me always want to go
Julia Anna Morrison is a poet from Alpharetta, Georgia with an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, Best American Poetry, Brink, and Narrative Magazine, where she placed third in their 14th Annual Poetry Contest. Anna is a Lecturer in Screenwriting Arts at the University of Iowa and she co-edits Two Peach, an online poetry journal, with Catherine Pond. Her first book of poems, Long Exposure, will be published this winter.
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