My mother gave me a locket that has, “love is patient,”
engraved on its hind, in English and in French. I wonder if that
is another excuse for her not being able to love me
the first fourteen years of my life.
The necklace has a cross, too – her saying He took care of me
when she could not. Second in importance, yet,
am I to an absent father too busy upstairs to say morning.
“Love is kind,” is a sort of finale, somehow fireworks
say that no one has ever loved me up to my mother’s standards.
She did not flinch when she gave me this. It
is understanding that she was not the only love I did not have.