City Girls

City Girls

Susan Shea

“He who fears has not been made perfect in love.”
1 John 4:18

The hardest part of being your mother,
far worse than watching you deal out
the cards of your chronic disease,
has been seeing you punish yourself
for not being Christ himself, and

I wonder how this happened to us

since we both know that we are being
rebuilt every day from the ground up
because our maturity is a skyscraper
designed out of our sight, so stunning

our awe has provided us with a want
and willingness to lay bricks so we
can be part of that great city where
we can eat all the fruit together
without testing your blood sugar

so until then, let’s please take a break
along the flowing river, let’s raise
our heads up in confidence to cast
our eyes on the towers and palaces
already built, already waiting for us

---

Susan Shea
Psychologist & Poet

Susan is a retired school psychologist who was raised in New York City, and is now living in a forest in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.  Since she has returned to writing poetry this year, her poems have been accepted in a few dozen publications, including Ekstasis, Vita Poetica,  Red Tent Living, Across the Margin, Feminine Collective, Persimmon Tree Literary Magazine, Military Experience and the Arts, and the Avalon Literary Review, as well as three anthologies.

Photography by Valentino Funghi