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Fourth Daughter

Anna Popnikolova | Poetry, Fall 2025

mother’s house is emptying out; at breakfast she says

she dreamt last night. slips fried eggs from pan to plate.

we listen. three yolks glisten back like nipples. we know about 

our mother’s dreams, we know the way they go. we scrape our forks, 

lift scraps of whites to our three mouths. the pan hisses in the sink.

mother sleeps in my old bedroom. says it makes her dream. 

I sleep in the guest room when I come home. last night mother dreamt

she was carrying a goat. splits her first egg, lets it run;

she was with our father. they were young. it was night. 

they were coming home to the apartment they used to rent, 

where I was born first. my goat was hungry, she says,

sops up the loose yolk with bread. I had nothing to give it, 

and it was crying. I searched in the dark and found an apple. 

it was round and red. I cut the apple into little pieces 

and fed my goat one by one one by one

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Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?

“I think in many ways I am a trace fossil of my mother, as we all are. I look just like my mother did at my age. I talk like her. We frown the same way. I am covered in trails of my mother, her movement, her fingerprints as on wet clay. I am who I am because she is who she is, and I am eternally grateful. Things change, but others stay just the same.”

Anna Popnikolova is a sophomore at Harvard College studying Philosophy. She is the founder of the Nantucket Poetry Festival, assistant editor of House House Magazine, and serves on the poetry board of the Harvard Advocate. Anna thinks that the Charles River is beautiful but she misses the ocean every day.