Emily Adams-Aucoin

RECEPTION

First, I waited for something to kill me.

I scanned the horizon for mushroom clouds 

or the curve of an approaching planet. 

Then, the medicine softened the edges 

and I waited to feel something again. 

I thought waiting would bring me a new life,

and I wanted, next time, to enter it right away.

On my birthday, I didn’t take pictures.

I played Candy Crush the whole pregnancy.

When my daughter was born, a door appeared

out of thin air. On the other side: the world,

the glittering and perilous world. I want to say 

I went through in an instant, that I was called 

by some angel to rise. But I tapped my foot 

on the tile for weeks, waiting for my new name

to be called. And when it came, 

I hardly recognized it, it was so like my old one.

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Image by Ron Lach from Pexels

Emily Adams-Aucoin is a writer whose poetry has been published in magazines such as Electric Literature, Frontier Poetry, TriQuarterly, Sixth Finch, North American Review, and Colorado Review. Her micro-chapbook It Adheres to Many Things won Harbor Review’s 2025 Editor’s Prize. She’s a poetry editor for Kitchen Table Quarterly, and you can find her on social media @emilyapoetry

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