My mother forgot my name yesterday 
She knows me. Just couldn’t quite remember what she calls me.
What she told the world I would be called. 

For a day, my name sat just over there, at the edge of her world 
ducking into the corner with dust bunnies, grandma’s recipes, 
and what to wear in the morning.  

But I’m back. Here again, I sit with her love of peanut brittle,
nestled against pink plastic curlers, 
stuffed into a purse filled with lipsticks and tissues. 

I’m right here when she declares on New Year’s Eve “I had three boys and one girl.”
But I wait for my name … or my self … to be hung back up with her comfy gray sweats, 
to be lost somewhere between banana bread and barley soup. 

I wait to sit again with the dust bunnies, trying not to sneeze, 
looking for a way back into the room.

~ Robin J. Phillips, Jan 1, 2019