“Mommy, can I have this dolly please?
I know that I have other ones at home.
Can I?
Please?
Yes I know there’s kids in Africa that don’t have any dollies,
That’s not what I was getting at.
Mommy, I want it.
I want it.
Mommy!”
Remember that mom? How silly was I?
Greedy for all the wrong things...
I feel your hand now- soft, fragile, wrinkled- in mine.
The doctors tell me that you haven’t got a lot of time…
“She’s hanging on by the tips of her fingers.”
One of them told me.
Always a fighter. Even when you’re pale and frail.
How long will you be here, to hold my hand while the hospital machines tick like sadistic time machines?
Like a clock without conscience.
I want more ticks on the machine.
I want more heartbeats.
“Mommy I want it.”
No.
I want you.
You should see the snow outside, Mom.
Typical Nebraskan winter, I tell ya.
Remember when I was eight, and there was that huge blizzard?
The snow piled up, but it was a gentle snow. Fluffy. Light.
The snow will keep falling. Keep fighting, the way the flakes fight the wind.
(Sigh)
Your hair is so grey now. I remember when you used to dye it
To spite dad and his ever greying, salt-and-pepper style.
You’re so thin...
Ugh! Come back to me, let’s rewind
To the years when I could be greedy for dollies, and not for days.

No matter where we go,
What we are doing,
Or how we are doing it,
Our lives are sentences;

They are ongoing poetry lines,
Followed by commas and semicolons,
For a semicolon symbolizes where a sentence could've ended,
But didn't.
Our commas show us that we have unfinished business,
And remind us not to overlook the details.

So we go on,
Sitting in silence,
Shouting in anger,
And laughing with joy.

Pen in hand,
We are words in the wind,
Written freely from scarred hands,
We fly against the wind,
letting the sentences grow,
and our lives push on,
in our untitled poems.

I turned on the news tonight, and saw a familiar face
Maya Angelou speaks of Nelson Mandela
“His day is done, our skies are leadened.”

It hit me then,

Forgiveness is more than  “Oh…it’s okay…”

If a man, a single freed prisoner, can change a whole country,
can forgive oppression, and depression, and apartheid brutality,
Forgiveness is not simple.

Sorry is not simple.
It’s a chance, to open the door to redemption,
Entire countries have forgiven the inhumanity of the past,
And yet all of us, each day,
Become angry for such small matters.

If nations can rebuild,
If Polish person can love a German
After the Holocaust,
We CAN forgive.

Forgiveness is the key to our self-imposed prisons.