To My Mother

Mi Querida Mami,

These are all the things I feel and am afraid to tell you, to show you.

My heart is broken for you, and every day I wish to hear your voice.

The loss of the one thing that drove me up a wall, has now driven a stake right through my soul.

The half that belongs to you.

Mami, I get sad every time I see you.

All I want is for things to go back to how they were.

Even more than that for you to be healthy.

To become a version of you my sisters can’t remember

Someone I’ve never met.

Do you remember our tickle fights?

How we’d end up wrestling until you’d bite my cheek?

And I’d laugh, and scream, and squirm, trying to free myself of you.

Now, all I want is that moment eternalized, not just in my memory

But, in actuality; to be infinite instead of finite,

I want to experience it again and again.

I dream of the sound of your voice, of your smile, your screech of a laugh.

Every day I remind myself that I still have you, it might not be all of you

But I have you, I get to enjoy you, I can still talk to you, and you can still write your thoughts to me.

And I would never ask anything of you, but please don’t give up.

I know you’re tired, more that I can imagine.

I know fighting isn’t how you planned to spend the rest of your life

But fight for me?

For the baby who hasn’t had enough time yet.

The baby who still needs her mother to hold her when she cries,

Even if now I’m the one who holds you.

Let me carry some of the weight you wont show us is on your heart.

Let me take some of the grief you’ve been shrouding in laughter.

I wish I could heal you; I wish my love was the potion you needed.

But there’s nothing I can do to give you back what you’ve lost.

No one I can pay to take your pain away.

I know I still have you, but I miss the parts of you that have faded, the parts that are fading

I don’t want to think about the ones yet to fade.

I hate that I couldn’t find a better diagnosis,

That it took so long to discover what was wrong.

I want you to be right again.

I want my mother whole again.

How do I even begin to tell you any of this?

While you’re fighting a raging battle in your head,

A silent assassin in your heart.

Ma, did you know you’ve always been my guiding light?

The star that always leads me home.

And lately, it’s been flickering, signaling something I never will be ready for.

And why voice these thoughts to you?

Why grieve what is still here with me?

Why fall apart if there has yet to be a catastrophe?

I just want you, Mami.

In whatever way I am allowed to have you, for as long as time permits.

You and me, Ma, we can get through this.

Con mucho amor,

Bianquita