I wanted to create something
Beautiful
For you this Mother’s Day
Something that would make you reminisce and
Snicker silently to yourself about
The silly young poet you raised
But honestly
All of your best memories are
Enveloped in tragic events like
The night your eye became the most visible victim
Of a left hook you never saw coming but
Instead of hysterics and understandable rage
You simply wore dark glasses around me so that you would not
Tarnish the legacy of the only man who has ever
Tried to make me feel like his son
Or how I still can’t look at the scar
An inch below your left collarbone
Because it reminds me of
Your battle with breast cancer
I remember crying for days when you lost all of your hair
But you just smiled as you and my sisters
Went wig shopping
Determined not to let malignant growths in your mammary glands
Keep you from being the divine woman you knew how to be
And when I was 12
You spent more time away from the home you paid for
Than in it because
Your days were consumed with work
You rose before the sun even thought to show its face and
The moon still beat you home most nights
I really tried to write you something beautiful, Mom
I just find so much love in your strength that
The good times simply pale in comparsion
So instead of rehashing all of the sweet memories
Of being your hard-headed son
I felt it was more appropriate to
Remind you that the most exquisite thing a mother could ever do
For her son
Is to keep living
Even when life allows every reason
To give up
8 
