how can i convey what it was like
to learn to love at forty six?
in a storage room
in a throne room
listening and
listened to
i spoke
'i was not allowed to love
it was not safe to love
i need to love
you need to be loved'
my kids
my Millennials
my Gen Zees
my heart
broke open
when we
met at Moses
my best friend
my honest friend
(you saw me
i saw you)
motherless
child
childless
mother
i swam up through
oxytocin eyes
and breathed
in twenty-
five years of grief
bridged by the
backbone of
a titan
tapped out
in words that spilled
and spilled into
a pool
a stream
a river
an ocean
a thundering
heart
beat
folded into
steel
to pierce the
hooded eyes of the
world
in a little city
in a park
in a studio
in a storage room
in a throne room
in free fall
i opened my arms
and was embraced by a
life worth living
by a family worth loving
in the year of the virus
in the best year
of my life.
January 2021
