Career Day

I borrowed her teal scrubs in second grade
and for career day I went as a mother,
inspired by the free toothbrushes and boxes
of latex gloves she brought home from a job
she wouldn’t choose a second time around.
Pushing a baby stroller and carrying plaque
scraping tools, I remember Mrs. Feagin
confused as to what exactly I aspired to be.
Or maybe her real question was “why” and
she was too polite to ask it. I’ll forever wonder
how that made my mother feel, seeing her
daughter idolize a livelihood she only picked
out of necessity. A child, her child, viewing
spit-stained scrubs as some type of single-
mothered dignity. I never wanted to be a dental
assistant, and I guess neither did she, but
I’m reminded how much we all stay the same
every time I write a poem about her.

Callie Crouch (she/her) is an undergraduate English major at Saint Joseph’s University. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the university’s literary magazine, the Crimson and Gray, and was published in the 2022 edition. Her work is also currently featured in Olit Magazine’s 2022 winter Issue, Wingless Dreamer Publisher’s anthology Dulce Poetica, and upcoming in Levitate Magazine, Quarter After Eight, and RockPaperPoem. She is from Florida, but now lives in Philadelphia, and spent this past summer studying travel writing under poet Dr. April Lindner while living abroad in Rome, Italy.