Mother

She looks so fragile. Her posture, usually so straight and confident, is hunched. Her eyes - those brilliant sapphire-blue eyes that captivated my dad thirty years ago - are a tear-softened turquoise behind black-rimmed glasses. She stares blankly out the window, seeing something I don't. Watching memories, perhaps. My mum, the strongest woman I know, looks breakable. the old cherry clock ticks away broken heartbeats -- splash of crimson wine I sit beside her and place my hand over her smaller, trembling one. It's the only comfort she will accept. She is my mother. She is supposed to be strong for me, not the other way around. That's what she would say. So I sit beside her helplessly, holding her tiny hand. She has lost her mother tonight. And I can only hope that, someday, I will have a child to hold my hand when I lose this woman I love so dearly.