it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm
a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours
I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon
eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago
we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past
I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not
until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep
and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul
Dec 11, 2016
Dec 11, 2016 at 11:16 AM UTC
it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm
a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours
I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon
eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago
we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past
I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not
until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep
and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul
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