I Owe You Mother

Your lips start to move and I hear the sound of your worries, numbered like the children of Abraham, boundless, like the sands in Egypt, all of them, calling audibly. the wrinkles beneath your eyes wrinkle me, unwelcomed lines tracing the paths to a grave, alas, I might not be able to return everything you gave. these things; your voice, your eyes, remind and hasten me, yet I feel like I’m running on a mill. terribly wounded by frenemies, but only angry at the air, the trees, the freer animals that I can’t be, and at the luck that thus plagues me, haunting, taunting, like a lion does a deer. clutched and leeched to joyful memories, the flashes of the folding of your skin, and the growing tiredness in your steps. Mother, these years have betrayed me, the knives in their hands, have the wounds on my back as their scabbards, they’d just pulled and plugged, they took your youth and gave me fear, and now threaten with the hardness of the earth, so every time I hear your voice coarse with worries and see your wrinkling face with nothing in my hand, my heart shatters.