UNNESTING by Mary Lee McNeal

With indelible ink
 I write the name I gave you
 on each towel and sheet
 before I fold and place them
 in this trunk -
                  as if I could mark you
 any longer as mine!
                 as if we both didn't know
 you're a woman now, bound
                to name yourself: separate

I am remembering
the days spent washing, folding
tiny nightgowns and blankets,
scrubbing the places you'd lie,
trying to imagine you,
               a stranger about to burst
               from my own belly,
 grateful to find a name for
 unfamiliar domesticity: nesting instinct

Now, eighteen years later
I'm unable to name
these strangely soothing
preparations to send you away.
What to call this
pulling apart of the nest?
                     this plucking out
of the feathers and sticks
which have bound us?

This has no name, my
daughter, this instinct
                    to help you leave,
this terrible urge to
                    push you out.