Outside My Son’s Therapist’s Office

by Sara Quinn Rivara

Bailey Mahon

I am a disappointment: to my mother for not cleaning my room, to my ex-husband for not obeying, to my now-husband for being depressed, to my students for leaving teaching,

to poetry for not being the poet I thought I’d be by middle age, to my son for everything. Is this even poetry? Thumb-typing on my phone in the half-dark on a country farm

in a dented silver Honda? My son is sixteen and a wonder. We talked about music all the way to his therapist’s farm. When I left him in the paddock, a throng of goats surrounded

him, and his face opened to the same fear as when I would leave him at daycare, or at his father’s apartment. Are you okay, Bird? I asked. He nodded, small and tight,

Yes, Mom, I’m all right as his therapist walked up the muddy path. I walked back to my car beneath bird-heavy trees. Later he is red-cheeked and jubilant. The goats loved me!

I was never afraid, Mom, he slammed the door, already annoyed. Is a poem just one thing after another or is that a life? I finished crocheting his baby blanket sixteen years too late.

I was so scared back then. I was incandescent. I held his hand in every snowy lakewood, I held him on my shoulders in Lake Michigan. We speed down the mountain, Soundgarden

blasting through the speakers. He hums beneath his breath taps his fingers against the cold glass. What ferocities we have become.

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Sara Quinn Rivara is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently LITTLE BEAST (Riot in Your Throat Press) a finalist for the 2024 Oregon Book Awards. Her work has appeared in West Branch, Colorado Review, Pithead Chapel, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.