My name is Rachel Wiley.

I'm a poet from Columbus,  Ohio, and I'll be reading my poem "The Mother Riddle," a poem I wrote about navigating my  very complicated relationship with my mother. With all the suddenness of finding a rogue shard from a broken glass with the tender bottom of your foot it occurs to you that you haven't talked to your mother in months.

Try as you might you can only drum up a thimble of guilt about not noticing sooner. You reach out with a simple hello, half-hearted attempt, as it is, there is still heart, obligatory beating. Three weeks go by with no response.

She is preparing the ground for you. She means for you to grovel. You know better than to hope she will concede to not reaching out either.

This is your fault the way everything is/has always been/will always be your fault. Your fault for staying and speaking where her beloved son refused. You know she would forget the name she gave you if he were to text her with half a heart.

You decide to call this time rather than text. Before you can dial the phone, a graceful sphinx pads in and stands guard at your throat, a massive and regal feline with the face of every tv mom you wished for and a hint of your therapist's encouraging smile. She says you must answer three riddles before you try to reach out to the woman whose body bore you:

One: If your mother disowns her own mother and her mother disowns her mother before that and you then disown your mother is it a grudge or a genetic trait?

Two: If your mother hears you being brutalized by her rageful son in another room of the house and turns the volume on the television up in  response is she still actually allowed to say she is your mother?

Three: If after 15 years and lots of therapy you ask your mother to acknowledge the way she failed to protect you and she still responds by turning the volume on the television up and only then do you begin tugging your roots free of her, are you holding a grudge, or is the grudge holding you, like your mother should have?