I am a mother without a child
Who comes to me for comfort.
I am a mother with a child
Who walked away from loving care
And chose to be a distant friend
Instead of a loving daughter

I am a mother with only one
Who really wanted to have two,
And wouldn’t have been sad at three.
But never won the right to choose
And had to make the best of what
Was offered as my portion.

Fifty years have come and gone
Plus two more for good measure.
The gap has narrowed not a whit
And my path still skirts the chasm.
I reach with practiced carefulness
To read the card that is my lot
As a mother with no daughter.
ljm

I remember the graves, the hush of the rain
Soft as a whisper, sharp as our pain
We wandered through rows where the cold marbles slept
And sorrow, like ivy, around us had crept

You walked beside me, apart yet the same
Two leaves on a stem no storm could reclaim
We spoke with our silence; the sky read our script
Gray as the truth that we both tightly gripped

I’d loved you for years but silence I wore
A coward’s confession behind a closed door
That hush was my thunder, my shadowed regret
For I saw in your stillness what you never said

Your burden was deeper, your youth left behind
To cradle your brothers, to steady their minds
Your father a ghost with a bottle for breath
And you, the lone lantern fending off death

We sat by the well, cracked stone and decay
A ruin forgotten by sunlight or day
And somehow, your hand found mine in the dusk
As soft as a prayer, as quiet as trust

We looked at each other, no questions, no schemes
Just truth in a moment that softened the seams
You smiled, I smiled, and time lost its thread
Then we kissed where the living still speak to the dead
And nothing existed beyond what we knew
That sorrow had brought me forever to you

We sat in the rain as the silence returned
But softer now, like the ache had been learned
No words were exchanged, yet something had grown
We felt a bit lighter, a little less alone

You were an enigma to me.
The one I always wanted,
But could never have.
Then, I got you.

The regret I feel...
is a shadow gnawing at the edge of every memory.
You weren't what I dreamed,
or maybe I wasn't who I thought I'd
be
standing beside you.

We smiled,
but it was muscle, not heart.
We touched,
but it was surface, not soul.
I mistook the silence between us
for a special thing,
but was really for a funeral I hadn't been brave enough to attend.

Now, when I think of you,
I think of winter,
bare trees clawing at a paper sky,
and a wind that doesn't care who it leaves behind.

Maybe we were meant to break.
Maybe some stars only burn long enough
to teach you what darkness really is.

I don't hate you.
I don't love you.
I simply remember,
yet even my memories are
tired now.