Mama's big rainbow

umbrella keeps me nice and --


dry in the shower.

My sister made
A little rainbow out of clay,
It sits on my desk;
I look at it every day
Though its colours did fade.
It reminds
Me,
It’s just a matter of time
Before I’ll be able to see
The dust, the grey on everyone’s
Face, as if they’ve misplaced
Their joy and fun.
Still, I’ll wish that my
Rainbow will look Age in the eye,
And just have a good laugh.
My colours will stand
Through every wash, by machine or hand.
Air
Won’t be whitening my hair.

If I could,
I would paint a picture of you across the sky—
A canvas of clouds for the world to see.
The rainbow, my palette, dipped in hues of my heart,
To illustrate the boundless depths
Of how much I love you.

A picture might capture a million words,
Yet a million words falls short—
They can’t hold the vastness of my love,
A love that spills beyond the edges of language.

I try to voice the feelings I harbour,
To let you glimpse the ocean within me,
But every time, my voice falters,
Drowning in the waves of emotion
That crash and recede, leaving me silent,
A debtor at the banks of words,
Struggling to pay off what cannot be expressed.

But if you could see the sky I paint for you,
You’d know, without a word spoken—
That my love for you is as infinite as the heavens,
And as enduring as the light that breaks through the storm.

You can only spend so many hours in labs, study groups and classrooms - under relentless, fluorescent lighting - before you start feeling life withdrawal.

When I hit that stresshold, I need to rebalance myself.

I could go to the New Haven harbor - I find the ocean endlessly relaxing - or for a quick fix, I can always rely on the warmth of multicolored product packaging.

For the last one, a grocery store will do. I’ll walk the bright, prismatic cereal aisle, and run my finger gently along the gratuitous, rainbowed variety of selections.

It’s a soothing gesture that I repeat several times. A reminder that there are still beautiful, shiny things out there, on demand, in the uncomplicated, non-academic world.

Today my son
Is to be sentenced
To prison. He
Lives 23 hours a day
In a jail cell, he will move on
Steeling courage few of us
Ever have to experience.
Consider your luck.
His mental illness
never to be a crime.
Will there be light for a prism?
Where he can turn to
Other pathways
Less dark and Forge
Himself into the open
Blue sky and all the rainbows
From here on out.
On the outside we are blind
On the inside some
Are given true sight.
I cry for a rotten system
In mental health care
We own. You might
Want to pull up some buckets
For all mothers tears
Knowing the best we have
Is incarceration. How is that
America? Tired of blaming anyone but yourself?