Sinners by Mila Holt

When I was ten,       my dying mother moved

to the first floor:      wheelchair,      two kids,   no 

husband,     snapped bones.        She howled

like a freight train.

              Did I take up the piles on the stairs?         She         

 wouldn’t know one way or the other.      

                I cat pawed past her full chamber pot,

         wouldn’t do favors after her response to my 

simple request:   

          when my friend comes over could you please

act normal?

      At eighteen I had sex with my boyfriend’s roommate

 in a campus building under construction.     

          Electrician’s light bulbs hung in cages.

   We did it on the staircase.      My boyfriend

howled our names from the unfinished stage,   

            The two people he trusted the most.               

 

                Is it enough to forgive oneself? 

Mila Holt has an MFA from Pacific University, where faculty awarded her the merit-based Washburn Scholarship. Her work has been accepted to The Calyx Journal, The Vassar Review, One Art Journal, Trampoline, and other publications. She is a former television writer and she lives in Northern California.