Like a Rock

I carry my mother like a rock in my pocket that I just can’t seem to throw away It serves me no purpose, it just weighs me down ~~~ When I first found it, when I first picked it up and started carrying it with me, I thought it so beautiful – I could look at it for hours But, like my mother, it never looked back at me, never grew warm under my loving gaze For the longest, I was blind to that, Blind to anything but the beauty, blind to the cold, hard, beyond-remote nature of the rock, of my mother, my stone ~~~ I carry my mother, a thought without weight And she’s heavier and she’s colder than all the stones there are ~~~ By the time I recognized her immutable, emotional unavailability, I had run out of joy, felt depleted of hope – But I could not, for the life of me, stop seeking a beauty, a warmth, inside her heart Could not stop wishing that one day this stone, my mother, deep inside my pocket, Might just become its own opposite – Change from hard to fluid, from cold to warm But my rock, my hard burden, will only turn to water When my mother stops being a stone