To be a mother, is an impalpable force that pulls like gravity, and it is best to succumb to its raw beauty, than to fight against its current, or hold on tightly to the one you once were.
I thought about the way that she looked at me,
while she drew stick figures on a blank sheet of paper,
I hear them crumbling…
how she thought that I was big,
I was big in a way that I could never fully comprehend.
I thought about her coffee colored braids and loose hairs,
her small fingers fidgeting while she waited for me,
about the times that she said “play with me”
while my mind wondered,
Is your mind wondering? she asked.
No, I am here, I said,
and I hoped, so terribly, that it was true.
I thought about how she cried for me,
“Just another lullaby,” she said.
and it seemed that there wasn’t ever enough time.
I was swinging from the hands of the clock,
staring back at myself,
with my head over the bed railing,
singing lullabies.
How she thought that I knew the answers to all mysteries,
that I alone could create anything,
“Can you make me a house that can fly?” she asked.
“Mermaids, they are not real, are they?”
and how I often wanted to say that houses could fly and mermaids were real,
and I could do,
anything,
because I alone knew the answers to all mysteries.
How she unknowingly,
was big to me,
as the sea was big to a small fish,
she was the fantasy,
she would create a world,
that was new to me.
(Mothers Love Painting by Roxana Gonzales, Saatchi Art)
