12/11/2022
I write poems that gave the world a glimpse of what I carried; of what I carry. A chance for me to build a bridge in an effort to find a way to reach you. Mom. 12.11.15 🤍
This piece is called “Poetry died when I buried my mother.”
Somehow writing made me feel closer to her because I wrote the things I dare not say.
So as they used the jaws of life to cut her out of the car, they extracted the ink from all my pens. Pens that hold untold stories of my scars that never fully healed right. Scars that will never fully heal. Scars that only a mother could see.
She was my poetry.
And my poetry died in the car with my mother that day. And later poetry tried to be reborn in the form of a child. But I wasn’t ready…not yet anyways. I grew into something stronger and weaker at the same time. Some days a person I barely knew.
But there are no metaphors to describe the melancholy. No similes to describe the distance. No alliteration to describe the agony, the aguish, the anger.
She was my poetry and poetry died in the car with my mother that day.
And somehow when she left all of the poetry that I carried inside dissipated, it had too. Because what kind of person stays angry at the dead. Because an anchor took occupancy where my heart use to reside. Because no amount of poems would bring her back.
So I put down my pens and tear drops replaced pen strokes in the pages of my journals. Journals that hold untold stories of my scars that never fully healed right; of Battles on battlefields that I have fought and loss to many times to keep count.
7 years later — days go unnoticed and the nights go un-slept and I and reminded of all of the things we left unsaid. All the I love yous I left unsaid.
I long for moments where we talked through gust of winds as they ruffle through trees and I know it is your laugh returned to me.
I know you always find a way to return to me. I remember the night you visited me in a dream and said, “my child, it’s time for your to pick back up your pens, you were never writing those poems to reach me.”
Mom. 12.11.15 🤍
