My mother is a book
made in china by a company name I can't read on the sticker because
her font is too small.
Her skin is romantic and Victorian: elegant hand writing with roses, stamps, pretend pressed flowers.
She is even decorated with butterflies and tea cups, delicate and feminine.
She is gold in the middle, lost when a page is opened. Her body has many crisp, clean squares without a word on them.
She has many years with no writing.
There is a note for what she wanted for Christmas, a phone number for holistic medicine--
one poem.

Hundreds and hundreds of pages of silences then one tiny voice.
She said, "everyday we chose to learn. Every day we sometimes get burned."
And, "They wouldn't believe it if I told you what its like behind your eyes."
"Dont' give up, Whatever you do, there is so much love for you."

The woman who gave birth to me
--she's a book.
I touch it but wood is not the same as human skin. The sound of pages flipping is not the same as the warmth of air being taken inward in a breath. Closing pages is not the same thump as a heart beat.

A book is only a little life.
My mother deserved more than a little life.
More than just a little page.
More than just a little book her daughter reads over and over and over again,
hoping for a little life.