Mother wakes up
before all our dreams do.
There’s the everyday sound
of the door creaking open,
windows yawning,
spoons and pans screaming
a ‘hello’ in unison.
More sounds arise –
the fish-seller outside,
staring at our door;
a plate falling off;
seven sneezes;
a timer in her head
that says two people
have to be woken up soon.
The loudest, though,
is a muffled voice
from a cupboard
she likes to forget.
It wraps her up,
gets close to her ears,
says,"you’ve been a fool, lady,
look what you could have done
and look what you have."

Sometimes, in the afternoon,
she finds herself.
Takes out a book.
A tear in her eye,
she says,
“I feel like going away.
Doing it all over.
Sometimes,
oh, man,
sometimes I want to scream.”

On most days,
writing sounds exactly
like my mother.

There was a time, you
were a sad song
and I spent evenings
and midnights
staring at your lyrics.
They made little sense,
sometimes none at all.
Yet, it would be
melancholic
when you played,
so I gave up and sat
with you, watching
and talking about
all the black
among the white.

A year later, you
found a new audience,
a new city,
and I,
I found my evenings
dark
and lonely.
It was
all of a sudden
too black
and very little white
and I hummed
a song that you
used to love.

We still meet
at times,
both smiling
but you always
have somewhere to go.
The days you don't,
we sit, like we used to.
My voice
becomes a sad song
that floats in the air.
I talk of the past
you can't seem
to remember.
I look at you
and try
to find you.

You were just the yarn, I thought,
for dreams that were mine to weave;
you were always cold, I felt,
and warmth was solely mine to give.

I told you to keep your hair untied
opinions, I believed, were mine to leave;
you found no home in this house I own,
your absence, in fact, is now mine to grieve.