Alterations

by Dorian Kotsiopoulos


One day your boy
brings home a girl
and you know
he is hers now.

It is something 
in the way she picks 
a stray thread 
from his shirt.

Follow that thread
to your mother-
in-law’s house, 
where this pattern was cut.                                                    

Look, she’s still stitching--
she’s been letting out 
seams for years.
She will show you.


* * * * *

"Alterations" was previously published in WomenArts Quarterly Journal and in Emerge Literary Journal.

Dorian Kotsiopoulos has featured at various poetry venues in Massachusetts, including the Brookline Public Library, the Loring-Greenough House in Jamaica Plain, and the Fuller Art Museum in Brockton. Her work has appeared in literary and medical journals, including Poet Lore, Salamander, Slipstream, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, On the Seawall, and Smartish Pace. She is a member of the Jamaica Pond Poets.