17 August 2012

The day I learnt to tie my own shoe laces

you sat beside me,

pausing the aching earth with the hand you laid on me.

You exhaled an exchange, proud between those lips

that had robbed the skies off from its moon and its ocean of stars

those lips never stopped kissing my father's old heart.

You became as gentle as cotton

that rested upon my sleeping spine

while I was the absentminded fingers,

the silvers of your hands had polished.

You were the summoning gaps

between my teeth of greeting apology—

shy in admiration like a child's burning cheek

from a fever, from a fall's untimely chance.

You were the years

that grew a home in the soles of my feet

binding the veins of hope, no God could extinct.

And the day I tied the knot,

You were the pressed flowers tucked between

the pocket by my chest,

closest to where I would always know you would be.

milkeyedmenderMother, • Opuss № I