Dayna Patterson, Self-Portrait as Perdita in 33 Washes of Purple, poetry by TahomaLiterary

In Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Perdita is abandoned as an infant on the desert shore of Bohemia, exposed and left to die. Perdita’s mother is pronounced dead after the shock of losing her son and infant Perdita. In my own tale, my mother suffered from debilitating postpartum depression after having three babies in three years. Numb, she left my fatherand didn’t resurface in my life until about a decade later. My mother and I have made peace, and that peace is spacious enough to face ache; it dares to ponder “if.”

Dayna Patterson is the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020), and she’s the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre. daynapatterson.com