Poem by Margaret O'Donnell

Pretend

It’s not the color of your skin
your look of fear
your baby with the sores
around her mouth
her vacant crusted eyes
flies hovering, the sour smell
of your breast milk
that chokes us.

No. We’re tapped out
we’ve given all we can
what about my own children
and saving for retirement?
There’s the dentist
the insurance,
and the cost of food so high.

It’s embarrassing
when our friends ask
where we’re going this year.
There’s no money for vacations.
See how shabby my coat is.
Twenty years we’ve had our car.

I gave to the food bank,
the fundraiser.
There’s no room in my house
for you.
It’s all we can do to keep
ourselves going,
what with job cuts coming.
It might be me next.

What if it’s me next?
I have to save.
Don’t look at me like that.
It will be me next.
You won’t be there.
There’re be no one to give me
a blanket, a place to sleep,
to hold me as I cry.

Go!
I have to get to the store,
finish this paperwork,
pull weeds,
anything but look at you.

Pray for me.

THEME: Childhood Hunger

---

Margaret O’Donnell is a former immigration attorney in Seattle who continues to represent asylum clients pro bono. Since retiring, she writes plays and recently, poetry about the natural world, the dislocations and pain of human migration, and family connection and disconnection. Her poems are published in Drunken Owl Theatre Anthology (2025), Here Lies Buried Anthology (2026), Western Washington University’s Elder Voices Project Anthology (Fall 2026) and San Pedro River Review (August 2026).

---