My Dearest Mother

My dearest mother,

you are beautiful.

I remember you always beautiful and you will always be that way in my head.

My dearest mother,

you are warm.

You carried my heart in your stomach for months, you could feel it beating inside you along with yours and that didn’t scare you, you didn’t run, you welcomed me between your warm legs, your blood was the first thing I saw when I came into this world.

And that was your honesty coming before you to teach me blood is what we give here, where we are in time and space. You watched me kick and scream, alive, and you knew you made me, that way, and those kicks and those screams were your pride because even up until now, it’s how you get listened to, not only heard.

You wear your pain like jewels and they shine in the sun, because you weren’t always as lucky as swans to have a companion to travel miles with and for as long as you live.

You create beauty with your skin, because your skin is a shelter, it smells of things that yet haven’t been named. You have inspired me to live a life I often didn’t bother to nurture, and I stand by your sufferance , what’s yours it’s mine.

You wiped my tears off my face that summer day, and told me to kill them with kindness. “You smile, just the way you do, there’s nothing” you said “nothing that can take that away from you”. And I often wondered if you have considered to stop smiling, to stop being kind, if you too saw our home like your prison. But you have been faithful to your promise, to amend our clothes and our hearts, to take care of us in a way that I will maybe never understand.

But I didn’t stop smiling and mom, it killed them so softly I don’t think they realized they are dead.

You picked every little bit of me from the floor of my room when my heart got broken, I have nylon strings as resistant as marble to hold my heart together, you made those for me, only a few slim cracks let cold draughts in now, and light out. It won’t scatter, it won't bleed, it's all warm like the dense hot chocolate you used to make when we watched the sky cry from the kitchen's windows.

You didn’t lie to me, you said "It hurts and it always will, but you listen to me now: you can never stop falling in love".

Because love is a war I fight everyday when you said you loved one man, and one only, and that wasn’t my father, but your very own. And that day I knew you can’t love more than one person, but you can fall in love with many, learn how to feel them, and then let them go.

My dearest, you reek of love anyway. You loved my father in the end, even if you didn't. He became another child to take good care of. You took him in, just as you do.

Mother, you reek of love. You took them all in, even if they ripped you apart. I've got siblings I shared your blood with, but hundreds of brothers and sisters you mothered in secret. Why do you do it, mother? Why are you so terribly tender?

I stopped worrying because I see you, mother, from when I started to see myself. You are not breaking, and neither am I.

You suffered when we suffered. You got sick when we got sick. Like there is still an umbilical cord to tie us to you, no matter how far or lost in the universe, no matter how bitter it gets, you’ll be with us.

Mom, you reek of love.

It’s the purest thing I’ve ever been drowned in.

I often wished things could have been different for you. But once again I watch you give yourself to others without one second thought and everything just makes perfect sense.

You are home. A home that was never tainted with the passage of time, or the memories of the death and pain of our loved ones. You are not only home, you are the feeling of home.

I watched you bring flowers to the grave of your own mother and your tears looked like diamonds from where I was standing. You gave your goodbye to the heart beat that made you and I stood there speechless to learn once again just how strong one can be.

You smell like summer. Those childhood summers for us to play and run in the woods, where we could fall and bleed and come back to you.

We always come back to you.

Your hands are oaks. You built me. Your breasts are hills to watch the world from, I drunk from them to follow my dreams.

I know you gave me all you could. I wish I could give you everything, not even that would be enough. I can only give you this letter, a poem and a day that’s all for you.

With love,

A Daughter.