We need all the mothers we can get,
I once was fond of saying,
and I was talking about me, then,
mothering all my borrowed girls—
the one who wrote me at the end of class,
shy as pencil strokes, “I pretend,
sometimes, you are my real mother”; 
the one who nested in our love seat,
silent but for clicks below her screen,
Tuesdays, Thursdays, alternate weekends,
until her father drove her to her real home 
on the other side of town, 
as decreed.
I didn’t know you 
back when I pretended longing was enough
to make a girl my own.
I admit it now.
I need all the daughters
I can find. The grown ones,
fine web of lines around kind mother eyes,
who love me for my longing,
daughters who are mothers 
to my words.