g’night

~ for Mom ~ you … kiss my hand three times as tender as a thistle, borne ‘my angel’ you whisper, as I kiss yours - skin as thin as paper careworn by the million things you have done for me, but warm … I turn at the door to shut the light - just in time to snatch your sweetened kiss from the air I return the same … hugging it to your chest like a child’s doll, you smile, eyes closed - ‘I love you’ we exchange softly … such a silly little ritual among a thousand others we have yielded over the years … but none as precious none as dear to my being none that I now miss as terribly for the sadly sobering fact that we will never, ever … ever share it … again.