I have felt the need to write for as long as I can remember. It
does not seem to be a process for me; rather, a small spark of a
good idea will float in my head for months before it finally
catches fire and I have to write it down. Most of my poetry deals
with real life events, and many of those events are quite sad. I
believe pain and sorrow causes our hearts to pause, to pay
attention to the fragility of life, so that we may learn to truly
treasure each day as a gift. I am not a morbid writer; I am a
writer increasingly aware of her mortality.
My name is Francie Davis, and I am 28 years old. I am married to
my best friend, and we have three young sons. I work part-time at
our local hospital, and full-time homeschooling our boys, breaking
and training horses, and working on my late grandfather's ranch.
I was raised in western South Dakota , and it has greatly shaped
my perspective on life. Along with loving very wide, open spaces,
I occasionally find cowboy poetry written in my notebooks—beloved
memories of my childhood. I have been published in a few small
hometown newspapers, in SDPS's Pasque Petals, and will be
published in The Cowboy Magazine in the near future.
My Mother's Scar
A bitter apricot-pink scar
Stretched over her left rib cage
Until it kissed her sternum.
Instead of the surgeon
Leaving her delicate flesh
Smooth, with only a pale scar,
He had taken her now-excess skin,
Rolled it into a rough, raw, ridge,
And stitched it down to flesh.
When I was sixteen, my mother
Stepped from the shower,
Drying off salty tears and warm water
On a royal blue towel.
With water dripping from her brown hair,
She asked me, almost a woman,
To look at her scar, aged two years.
I glance, embarrassed for us both,
At my incomplete mother.
Twelve years later, my mother is gone.
My shame of her brutal, jagged scar
Haunts me in my maturity.
I imagine myself—wiser and less selfish—
Tracing my finger across her pain,
Claiming her womanliness with love,
Meeting her hazel eyes, “You are exquisite.”
But I did not understand her need,
And now I am all that’s left of my mother’s scar.
does not seem to be a process for me; rather, a small spark of a
good idea will float in my head for months before it finally
catches fire and I have to write it down. Most of my poetry deals
with real life events, and many of those events are quite sad. I
believe pain and sorrow causes our hearts to pause, to pay
attention to the fragility of life, so that we may learn to truly
treasure each day as a gift. I am not a morbid writer; I am a
writer increasingly aware of her mortality.
My name is Francie Davis, and I am 28 years old. I am married to
my best friend, and we have three young sons. I work part-time at
our local hospital, and full-time homeschooling our boys, breaking
and training horses, and working on my late grandfather's ranch.
I was raised in western South Dakota , and it has greatly shaped
my perspective on life. Along with loving very wide, open spaces,
I occasionally find cowboy poetry written in my notebooks—beloved
memories of my childhood. I have been published in a few small
hometown newspapers, in SDPS's Pasque Petals, and will be
published in The Cowboy Magazine in the near future.
My Mother's Scar
A bitter apricot-pink scar
Stretched over her left rib cage
Until it kissed her sternum.
Instead of the surgeon
Leaving her delicate flesh
Smooth, with only a pale scar,
He had taken her now-excess skin,
Rolled it into a rough, raw, ridge,
And stitched it down to flesh.
When I was sixteen, my mother
Stepped from the shower,
Drying off salty tears and warm water
On a royal blue towel.
With water dripping from her brown hair,
She asked me, almost a woman,
To look at her scar, aged two years.
I glance, embarrassed for us both,
At my incomplete mother.
Twelve years later, my mother is gone.
My shame of her brutal, jagged scar
Haunts me in my maturity.
I imagine myself—wiser and less selfish—
Tracing my finger across her pain,
Claiming her womanliness with love,
Meeting her hazel eyes, “You are exquisite.”
But I did not understand her need,
And now I am all that’s left of my mother’s scar.
Francie
Davis
Davis
 | |  | |  | |  | |  |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |