My mother’s wings would be made of thin iridescent chitin. The kind everyone notices
because they absorb black light and give off a bright blue-green glow. I am certain this glow and the spiral of her womb  are what others sought to dominate. Her inner beauty,  her pretty, her numerous adjectives that numerous men wished to fish out and keep as keepsakes to make them feel like the bigger fish. She was never a small fish in a pond she was always fluttering in the sky. Free. Wild.Winged

They only try when someone else wants you. When I want to sit next to you, they pick up the slack and show more love. You become like a fish in a pond they isolated you in. Then, they proceed to reel you in year after year. Every time they sense another they throw in more bread crumbs and you swim with hope that dethrones your gut. But  if they were sitting there in same house as you suffered without offering to lead you to the ocean do you think these love bomb crumbs they start to sprinkle into the water make up for more than a decade in the pond of never good enough,  never pious enough, never quite right as you are so they have to change you? Does it make up for all that sorrow of not being who you truly are?

Expect beautiful things: she runs to me and laughs with her usual pink furry sweater.  we combine “my mãe” with some English “let’s go” and head to the door

“my mãe, let’s go!”. We try to make out the door to downtown to meet her divorce lawyer.

for my mãe, mãe
I finished filling out a declaration and 5 other legal documents. Did her laundry, folded her hospital uniforms and cleaned the yard.

She laughs and smiles and sometimes looks off into the distance, my mãe

everyday we try to find something to smile about

dear life, dear long stretched yarn, I am no longer at your sweet beginning

If you were to have a four hand width from beginning to end, I would be be placing the the second hand over your yarn

I always assumed you were a skein
but your paths are simpler but far more intricate than coiled yarn

dear life, use me
one more humble string to weave beauty

cut across the community center and walked quickly with eyes on the light

I have timed these lights. I know it takes a minute and thirty seconds from when the light on the other side of block turns green until this light ahead of me turns green. And I know they go clockwise.

So, I lift my left hand and tighten my grip on a bag of muffins and a roll aiming to participate in the upcoming race against the street-light clock. I exert a faster pace than I have in days because tomorrow is a monumental day and I have yet to pack.

I have yet to pack a suitcase to board my flight tomorrow. Yet to pack with the sincerest of reasons as to why I haven’t yet done so, so darling are these reasons that they carry my friend’s name. She came to my town and we talked as we always do for hours of her childhood in Ukraine and mine in the states, of dreams, of joy, of both falling the bathroom. We stir the banter until it’s ready to be cooked, and then we cannot part until sundown. It is true I walked to the station and the chatter became daily bread. The kind only a good friend can share with you.

Although I carried muffins, I was already happy. I was full.

You are already a poem
that I love—

Like all great poetry
it is to be shared with the world