Past Lost-Getting Closer to Found

Daughters Living Without Mothers

The driver handed me the plastic red rose

and delivered his best sentiment, and I said,

"What's this? A welcome to the No-Mom's Club?"

My memory does not fail me nor does

it erase the unprocessed pieces left to digest.

Time weakens the pointed pain,

but sobering is the lonliness that

strikes my blind sides when I'm not looking.

 And vulnerable.

Season after season has passed

and yet I expect the familiar knock at the door.

I thumb past the address in my book,

and I value drops of perfume left in the

atomizer.

Why should I expect a conclusion to these things?

She is not shrinking, but rather swelling

as I foster that which she taught me,

and I stand in her strength.

I magnify her devotion and loyalty.

Spread her smiles,

her girlish silliness.

And she is walking in beauty...

And I do not need a mother,

but to remember that I am

a daughter.