Amalia Herren-Lage

Pluto and Charon

When at 16 I crashed my mama’s car
a witch told me it was
because she missed me,

calling me home too soon.
The car crumpled around me like
a shield, an impact that smelled

of airbags and burning stars.
This is how I know
the dead feel grief too.

Here she was, pulling me,
with her heavy magic into
the face of a maple tree.

Nine years later and sometimes
I still violently fling myself
towards my mother.

How embarrassing, a woman my age
seeking her voice so piously,
stuck in an orbit of bruises.

I want to say, Death made you a God
of whom I am not permitted to speak ill,
forearm stippled with some cosmic stigmata.

Amalia Herren-Lage is about to graduate from Bates College with a BA in Gender and Sexuality Studies. At Bates she has been passionate about science and technology studies, and creative writing, culminating in a semi-creative senior thesis exploring biological citizenship and disability studies as they relate to her experience with a terminally ill mother. In her free time she enjoys cooking, reading poetry, and visiting her family in Spain.