Dance with me, son
twin to my moon
center of my universe
blood of my blood.

My sweet boy,
what have you become?

I see you yearning for love,
yet burn everything
you touch with greed
desiring it be yours.  

I see you clinging to power
in your firm grip
nothing remains
that carries a soul.

I see a warrior, a fighter,
a wanderer, a lost soul
far away in foreign lands
of the mind.

Come back down
down to mother earth
the land of the living
where everything takes root.

Dance with me, son
naked and
barefoot
on ***** ground.

Six years. Six whole years of you
Two little hearts inside your nose,
And I’ve always said it’s because
Mommy and daddy’s love was too strong to hold in one.

You were my miracle before you took your first breath,
And every second since, I’ve fought like hell to keep you safe.
They don’t see the nights I stayed awake,
The tears I swallowed when they tried to take you away
But baby, you’re woven into me,
In every beat of my heart, in every prayer I whisper when I think no one’s listening.

They try to lie on paper like it can rewrite our story,
Like it can erase the bond that time and pain made unbreakable.
But those two little hearts you carry?
They are the proof
the purest kind of love
A love no distance, no silence, no fight can touch.

You are my light when the world feels dark,
My breath when I feel like breaking,
My hope when every door closes.
I want you to know
No matter what they say, no matter what they do
I am here. I am yours.

Forever.

And I will fight
With every scar, every tear, every sleepless night
To hold you close, to keep you safe,
To be the mother you deserve.

My Lilliann Mariee, my baby, my fight,
You are the part of me that will never break.

It rarely arrives
in a single moment,
it gathers in corners,

in unsaid things,

in nights spent

turned the other way,


in coffee gone cold

while silence fills the room,

in laughter you no longer reach for,

in the twitch of a finger
reaching for a wedding band

that isn’t there,
just skin now,

and the echo of a promise.

it settles in the pause

before your name is spoken,
in the hollow of a drawer

still holding the note I wrote you in 2015
in the way light filters in,
but doesn't quite warm
the space they used to fill.

grief is not the breaking,

it's the habit
of touching absence.