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after


After so many nights at the kitchen table, heads bent together
in angry whispers
After so many slammed dishes
After so many Sundays in the Nelsonville house,
with Hope and Grace trying to help
a twenty-two-year-old wife understand
her twenty-four-year-old husband
After so many tears
After too many Ohio winters . . .

my mother's bags are packed
her children's faces are scrubbed clean
and it is nearly spring

a time for new beginnings.

Written by Jacqueline Woodson

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