My Mother

my mother cannot love her heart dead with death barely feels the air pass by the soaked filter of her butt. my mother doesn’t love curtains cast shadows in her view doesn’t matter though same scene different day must be comforting. my mother has no love who isn’t there for real her fiction pumps life into her imprisoned mind while nicotine fingers stub out the rest. my mother lost her love more vague delusions must choke the life right out of her sunken chest memories dying over time repeatedly. [My mother passed in 2013. I wrote this piece 10 years prior. This is a memory from when I was 12. She used to just sit at the table and drink the tea she had me make and stare out of the window. I never knew why until I got much, much older. Thank God we made our amends together. She is with my brother–who died at 8–and sister who died at 3.]