It’s been 17 years since your birth
Yet there isn’t a number to describe what your worth
It is more than the count of curls on your head
More than the amount of books that you’ve read
You could count all the stars and they wouldn’t compare
To the kindness you give and the love that you share
I’ll wish you much luck when you travel around
And when your head’s in the clouds don’t forget to look down
Because we’ll lose our smiles
But we’ll see yours for miles
What’s special about you, Gillian, my love
Well it’s just that, it’s your love

My boy told me the other day
That he didn’t have a mother
He only had a babysitter

I say my boy--
The boy at my daycare
The boy with seven siblings
Ripped from five of them
Gained another in the process
Losing mothers like pencils

The mother he has now is a teacher,
No summer job,
But four foster kids to her name
Her summers are free
Her pockets are full
But my boys

They’re still in daycare
Six to six
Or longer
They come with bagged eyes
one in pull ups at the age of five
My boys

Their sister's in the other room
Their mother sits at home
Alone
Doing nothing
Probably drinking
Or anything but mothering

Right now
She’s out of town
There’s a babysitter at home
She picks them up late and drops them off early
They're cranky
And tired
They're getting six hours of sleep
Plus one at naptime

My boys never sleep at nap time
None of them but Isaiah
Isaiah
He loves to talk about his home
Not where they sleep at night
But at home
In Africa
He’ll tell you if you ask
It’s beautiful to hear
The joy filling his face is fixating

But then you see his legs
How they wobble in at the knees
When you see how he sleeps
He rocks himself the whole time
Rocking even through his dreams
It’s all from the orphanage.
The workers couldn’t help him to sleep.
He just turned five.
He starts kindergarten soon,
And he just learned how to spell his name
Everyone else here can read all the names
His and theirs
My boys

I love them with everything I have
And they know that,
But I leave soon.
In a few weeks we all go to school
I’ve been doing this for years, but them,
They haven’t
It’s their first
And I’ll pray
But I hate that all I can do is pray
They deserve more than that.
They deserve attention and love
They deserve hope and security
I can only hope that the next teacher will give that to them
To my boys
To my wonderful boys...

I'm sitting in the car
I'm sitting in the dark
I don't want to go in
to leave this place
this safe space
I want to curl into a ball
to leave
to go somewhere else
Why?
I don't know
my home isn't broken
the people in that house aren't hurting
but I don't want to be in that place
not even in my bed
in my room
alone

I'm sitting in my car
I'm sitting in the dark
staring at the light soaking through the walls
stress hanging from the rooftop like christmas *****
I just want the dark
the small dark
somewhere else
anywhere else
the lights look like spotlites
I don't want spotlites
I want small dark and alone
I want away
far away
to escape
somewhere they can't find me
where they'll never find me

I'm sitting in the floor under my stearing wheel
I'm depressing into the dark

Everyday
she watches him
her eyes stuck
becoming a role model
for the glue of his shoes
the glue  he practically pours on
it's trying to hold all those pieces together
the pieces falling like crushed leaves from a set of hands
it knew it had a job to do
like a mother trying to hold her family together
she doesn't have enough arms to reach out to every person who needs holding
to work her 9 to 5
to pay the bills
to take care of her parents
one of whom has forgotten her name
to pretend that her marriage is fine...
for the kids sake.
the kids who watch her sulking eyes on the way to daycare
and yes she's been told that only ****** mother's put their kids in
          daycare
but that's all she can do
so shut up
just shut up

it's like the high school girl
trying to hold her heart together
it's been broken...
like the shoes
the ones on the boys feet