Mother,
she talks to us
in change and
weakens me with
passing days.
Our memories that
fade, fade, fade
are sweetened
by their rarity.
Faced with seasons gone
and new to come,
they’re harsher now
on skin that runs
like rivers bent
and twisted on
a canvas once blank,
I am poised before the easel of youth,
poised before the brushstroke of
her most confident displays.
It is now that I am reminded
of my youth.
Now that I say goodbye to my mother
and her backwoods, where summers
spent hiding from the sun,
that peaked from behind the spaces between leaves,
left marks on my childhood,
the good kind
that leave smiles
not scars, I am reminded
of her ineffable face.
I have forgotten the harshest storms
of my life.
I have brokered the unwanted memories
in return for the ones
that make your
heart explode.
It is on top of you
I have carved out
a piece of myself
in the marble slab
of time.
Human Beans 