Delilah baby I can feel the weight of you in my arms.

I can feel my k to z love for you and see how that laugh of yours makes people cry
and how that smile pierces my heart because it looks just like his did.

I can feel the sun kissing each one of our toes as we sit overlooking the grand canyon in the kaleidoscope sunset.
your spider fingers are wrapped in my hair like a plea to never be left alone
your spindle legs are all knobby kneed and pale entwined with mine.

baby he left me not you.

I was a hurricane and he loved you too much to look

afraid that one glance and he'd be head over heels reeling out of control
like you were the drug and he was the addict.

they say everything happens for a reason and you are my reason.

Delilah baby you are the here and the now of forever.
the stop sign on the corner is an obstacle for street racers but its a godsend because its just enough of a pause for me to kiss you between the eyes.

and I can't ever finish anything so this story isn't complete

and at the top of the pass where the air is clear enough if we sing loud enough maybe he will hear us and remember who he left behind.

Happy belated birthday Mom,
I'm sorry it's two days late,
but I've been a bad daughter
and an even worse person.
You always told me not to go to your grave or put flowers on your headstone;
"I won't be under that ground," you'd say,
"and don't waste your money on flowers, I'll have no use for them where I'm going."
I still visit sometimes, and I do still bring flowers, but not nearly enough.
I know if I had been the one buried, you'd wear the grass down with your feet and then have the courtesy to plant some seeds.

Almost eight years later I still think about you everyday
and not a minute goes by where I don't miss you terribly.
What a cruel thing it is, to live a life where you're always missing someone.
To have so many things to say and receive no reply.

You would've been fifty seven this year.
I wonder how you would look as you got older, and sometimes, rarely, I forget what you looked and sounded like when you were here.
That's probably the worst part of it.

The first time I visited your grave was about a month or so after you had been buried,
the graveyard drowning in so much snow I actually visited the wrong headstone.
I'm sure Mr.Brown enjoyed the talk, though.
It was only after digging my bare hands through ten inches of snow and ice that I realized I was four spots down.
I then recognized your grave from the moonlight reflecting off the glass vases of yellow roses we had placed there during your funeral,
wedged in place with the snow hugging them tightly;
the roses frozen in time,
it was both beautiful and aggravating.
Good things funerals cost so much,
they should be able to have someone clean up the plot after the service.
I threw the roses out and gently tried to remove the vases:
the one with "wife" shattered in my hands and my frostbitten fingers picked each shard out from the snow.
I still carry a scar from that vase.
The one with "mother" on it remained in tact, I was just as gentle with it but it did not shatter.
You told me near the end that nothing in this world, nothing was powerful enough to ever have you taken away from me.
That vase sits on my dining room table to this day, nursing a reluctantly dying plant just as you'd want.
I don't think I'll ever have the green thumb like you did.

But I have everything else from you,
you always told me Kate was raised by your sister and that she was too much when you were so young,
"But you, Emily, you're MY daughter."
You said I was a godsend of a baby, never crying, content just to sleep,
and that I carried an old soul.
You laughed at how I always excelled at being alone as a child,
and you were so intrigued by my sense of imagination and creativity.
You always said you were the same when you were a kid.

So tell me, now that I'm older and I feel so alone all the time,
am I still you?
Were you this isolated and alien at my age now?
Did you carry the empathy to cry at little things you saw on the street or in a commercial,
so much so that you believe this world to be lost?
That you saw life as one big slap in the face?

I still try my best everyday to make you proud,
It breaks my heart constantly to think I didn't when you were here.
But life is cruel like that, and I was young and stupid and arrogant.
I know if you see my daily life,
you know I'm not 100% better,
and I know I probably never will be.
But I work hard, and I always say my "please" and "thank you"'s,
and I live by your example of always trying to help anyone in need.
It might not make up for the demons that I struggle with,
but atleast I still fight them, right?
I lost some years there where I should've died, and sometimes I wish I had,
but I didn't. I'm still here. I'm still trying.
And to be honest, it's not for me, or for my family, for love or sunsets, or dogs or any of the things that bring me up to a solid "content."

It's for you, because you taught me that's what you do in life.
You fight. You fight until your last breath.

I've thought this a million times in my head, but I'll say it now,
you were always right about everything.
As teenage girls, we challenge our mothers at every turn and decision,
convinced we are mature and capable of making decisions,
and then we say hurtful things when we don't get our way.
So you deserve to hear it, you were always right.

I wish I could tell you face to face.
I would tell you how much I miss you, more than either of us could've ever predicted.
I would tell you how blessed I feel to have had such an amazing mother.
I would apologize for judging you for the drinking,
I would tell you it took me forever to realize, but eventually I accepted my mother was human just like everyone else,
and just like everyone else, myself included, you made mistakes.
Above all else, I would tell you that I love you more than you'll ever know.

I'll be turning twenty-nine next month,
which means I have one year left of smoking.
I didn't forget my promise to you, I'll quit on my thirtieth birthday.
I'll continue looking out for my sister to the best of my abilities,
even though she can be impulsive and brash on occasion.
I'll continue to show empathy and kindness to as many people as possible, just like you would've wanted.
And finally, one day I hope to keep the promise I made to you so many years ago:
I promise to try and be happy.

On a mythical Mumbai weekend,
of no serene start or dubious end,
with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,

I stepped out of a puffing train,
my long unkempt hair a lion's mane,
getting used to my twitching tail,

Posing on the Gateway of India,
the extraordinary explorer pose,
took a boat to Elephanta (sans the hose),

and when my shivering co-passengers
had finished feverishly taking pictures
and started screaming holy mothers and sisters,

I took off from the starboard end,
and became the first man-lion to
cross the polluted Indian channel,

surviving to make the news channels,
my scientific name listed as a brand new mammal,
my mating call recognized as a gushing gargle,

On a mythical Mumbai weekend,
of no serene start or dubious end,
with imaginary beauties, invisible friends,

I devoured deep-kissing lovers for lunch
at Bandstand's low-tide on a hunch,
to the delicious sound of munch! munch!

even as Shah Rukh Khan watched disgusted
from his big big bungalow by the sea,
and as the city sharpshooters came after me,    

and later when they brought me down,
from Nariman Point building, like KING KONG,
I tuned a dusty guitar and sang a melancholy song,

on the death of adventure, love and reality,
dangers of delusions, lethargy and self-pity,
repression, horniness and too much TV,

down in a shower of bullets when I went,
sky like the coming of rain, godspeed, godsend,
in a mythical city, where nothing is really meant,

On a mythical Mumbai weekend,
of no serene start or dubious end,
with imaginary beauties, invisible friends...