Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Cousins” by Mori McCrae.

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Cousins

By Mori McCrae

Separated by

mere months or days and passed

between our mothers—birthed

closer than our own siblings,

staggered by our parent’s spotty

collective rhythms

of unprotected lovemaking, we were

baptized, bottle fed, washed, then balled-up as pairs

not because we matched, exactly, but cobbled

out of close enough necessity, as numbers climbed, we tumbled

like tangled laundry, heaped on the sofa,

where we were sorted, sometimes ignored

for a day, or years and now one of us is

gone for good.

A little parcel of stunned realization:

always intimate—

cars parked side by side

before a small Norwood church.

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Copyright © Mori McCrae

Mori McCrae is an artist and poet who writes from St. Catharines, Ontario. She is part of a collective of artists who run a small gallery in the village of Jordan. She began writing in 2011, publishing three chapbooks with Grey Borders Press, Niagara Falls. Her most recent book, Love and Lunch, was published in 2022 by Aeolus House.

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