I Meant To

Mother, I meant to finish college and go get my Master’s degree, to become and engineer and built great things in our cities. I meant to show you my new house with a suite above the garage, so you could leave that damn ghetto and have a safe placed to lodge. I meant to tell you of my Marie, how she’s all wrapped around my heart, let her tell you how excited she is for the family we’ll start. I meant to show you your grandkids, two boys and a little girl, so you could spoil them rotten, show them off to all the world. I meant to thank you in a speech when I got that big award, then be ushered off the big stage before the audience got bored. I meant to help you with the bills when your health began to fail, to rant and rave at the doctors if you continued to ail. I meant to make the Holidays a joyous time for family, to invite them all down here and throw a truly righteous feast. I meant to do so many things, to love, strive, achieve and give, but mostly mom, to be honest, I think I most wanted to live. But in an inner-city clinic they stuck a vacuum in my head, barely made it half-way out, you meant for me to be dead.