what is the dailiness in crying especially crying all day what is the dailiness in saying your
name and knowing you will have to say it again immediately again because no one ever hears
you look what I’ve done a baby I have to rock I have to tell you what it’s like up on my legs babies
don’t like you to sit but I can’t say anything no one wants to hear what is the dailiness no one wants
to hear it go on it does not end dailiness ends as in a walk that happens dailiness seems to end as in
it happens in a walk on a New York street a smell a fuck a looking good a death a breath or even a
trip to the mall or even a memory of one but this keeps going even my trips to the mall I hadn’t
been in years because we all shop online and because the inside of a mall is like the inside of a bag of
shower shoes with eyebrows but it’s a place I can bring the stroller is there room for what is wrong
as in what people have gotten wrong like a huge pregnant stomach isn’t fat I don’t mean I’m
defending it I mean the body really can move to fit another body inside you don’t even have to gain
much weight to get that big but you’d prefer to think of it that way instead of thinking of the uterus
as something like that is that daily like nothing else it is still with me unlike a baby as in my baby is
actually a toddler right now and everyone thinks that’s why I’m not writing I’m in the way whatever
state I’m in Rhode Island West Virginia Texas Ohio Minnesota I’m in the way but you are in my way
and I’ve never written more since I’ve had my baby she’s already been cat-called this is my baby this
is me this is a piece of cake there are 10,000 layers and everyone else this is all three why make it
about being a mom like it’s both a place no one should want to live in and a place you think
everyone privileges that’s a lot of mom to fit in the room every day you would know and if I don’t
ever say who you are we will never know the answer all my writing teachers urged us to say who you
are or we will all just be lost because of you and not knowing you
Carrie Oeding’s collection of poems, If I Could Give You a Line, won the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize and will be published by The University of Akron Press in 2023. She is also the author of Our List of Solutions, from 42 Miles Press. Her work has appeared in such places as DIAGRAM, Bennington Review, Miracle Monocle, and Sixth Finch. She is the recipient of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts’ Fellowship in Poetry and lives in Rhode Island.