Image Description: A backyard with a brown fence and large, looming trees.

By Michaela Brown

My mother on the phone with her mother flicks her tongue

the way she does when she reads me the single Dutch book on my shelf.

Down the stairs, she lumbers, phone pressed to ear, ear

absorbing the strung symphony of guttural verbs, short, sanded-down

declarations I know are such based on inflection alone.

My mother on the phone in our backyard, feet on an empty bucket

feet pretending they are standing on black, yellow, red land.

My mother on the phone speaking faster, my mother on the phone laughing,

my mother on the phone with her mother wants to “say hi”

want to envelope me in their language I do not know. Are they not always

using their mother tongues? Are they not always mothers

speaking? Three daughters on two ends of the phone and who has mothered

my tongue? I want to sing this national anthem,

I want to write this poem. Between Oma & me there is more than an ocean.

A recent graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Michaela is an EFL teacher currently based in Vigo, Spain. She is the first place recipient of the 2020 Marjorie Stover Short Story prize and has previously been published in Laurus Magazine, The Coop, and Dailyer. You can find her on Twitter @mikienbrown.