"A Week After" by Sally Anderson Boström

Over a low soft hill

is a black forest.

Weave your way 

through the dark tangles

to the forest’s heart.

There springs a river of blood

and at its mouth, a scar, 

sewn for a second time.

Follow that thread to this story, to a mother’s birth story. 

In my dreams, I have never given birth. 

I yearn for you to touch me, to 

insert something in me, as if

for the first time. 

In my dreams, I am a woman. But not

the kind of woman I am now. 

Sally Anderson Boström is the author of the chapbook, Harvest (2021), and numerous poems, essays, and short stories. Her most recent work can be found in Ms. Magazine, Humana Obscura, Sweet, and an anthology with Gunpowder Press. Much of her work centers on themes of motherhood, sensuality, and ancestral inheritance. Originally from California, Sally has spent the last decade living in Sweden and has recently relocated to Czechia where she is writing a novel about her ancestors. She is legally blind.