Chief Complaint
by Sarah Aronson
I stay with my mother in the waiting room
of the Juneau Public Health Center to see
about an abortion. The last night
they made love, my father anchored
his fingers in the sable-thick
of my mother’s hair and made me
the minnow now circling her interior. My brother
is not yet one and so tips onto his side
maneuvering plastic blocks and rings. Colors
unlike the milk-jade of this town. When the nurse
calls her biblical name, Mother staggers, breasts
heaving wet kisses beneath her sweater: fuchsia
and violet thistle-shades chosen
from the winter section of Color Me Beautiful.