Lia Purpura, Parasol Mushroom (detail), featured in AGNI 102
My Mother Becomes a Pond
Her care inventory: gloves, sanitizers,
body powder, wipes, lotion, bedpan.
Today I order a lavender spray.
The carpet soaked in urine,
her diaper hanging loose—
swollen, sagged.
A drop trickles down her thigh
and wets her ankle as she is eased into bed,
a walker at her side,
the caregiver’s arms
under hers.
Her bruised hand
clutches the bed rail.
She turns—no longer certain how—
lies back, the whites of her eyes
gray puddles, her lips parted,
dripping saliva.
She babbles: Aab. Aab. Aab.
All day
my mother becomes a pond,
then a rivulet, dew
thinning to mist.
There, in that world,
a daughter mourns—
carries rocks
across the river,
blood on her heels.
There, fish circle
her toes.
There, the water
softens into milk.
————
Aab: Water, in Persian.
Leila Farjami
Leila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet, translator, and psychotherapist. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, AGNI, Pleiades, The Cincinnati Review, The Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Recipient of the Iowa Review Award in Poetry, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award in Poetry, and a 2025 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship, she lives in Los Angeles. (updated 10/2025)