Free Verse
Celebrating Mother's Day
May 9, 2010
Mutti
Not cursing through me
(As it once did),
Your blood flows calmly in my veins
And reassures me even
After your betrayals.
It seemed you spat me out of your womb
Into the rubble of WWII:
A hospital bunker
All hunkered down:
Doctors, patients, and muffled babies,
All gasping in unison
Until those ghost whistles—
Faintly from the sky, at first
ever gaining
In volume and velocity—
Exploded into our neighborhoods,
And those who survived heaved
Smoke filled sighs until the next round.
Today, my thin skin,
too, has deep tears
From innocently inflicted scratches—
My hair, too, has grey
Under the bottled tint.
Last night, a young man found
you
Collapsed on your knees, red and swollen
Slumped
As if to beg for an unanswered prayer
In front of your bed,
Away from your home,
Sold by for a pittance,
So strangers
Could lift you back
Into bed.
You clutched your luck like a
lottery win,
Close to your chest
And flew to a place
Of streets paved with stars and handprints
Abandoning me to my grief.
I clasp my luck like a charm to my chest,
And reside where the streets are paved
With cobblestones and revolutions,
Leaving you
To your grief.
When I come and hold you
So you don’t fall
And together we stumble—
You into the void
And me into the regret
Your stumbling takes me,
We complete our path together.
