image of stepdaughter, Brene, and I in 1983, the first time we met
poem submittted to "A Parent's Love" poetry contest, Matt Caliri, sponsor, August 21, 2026
When you ask me who I love more, I think of the day I said I do and unknowingly married your mother’s fear, your father’s history, and a five-year-old girl with pink-champagne laughter who slipped her hand into mine as if it had always belonged there. I loved you then~ in the uncomplicated way new love arrives, bright as cupcakes and duck ponds, a small miracle I hadn’t been able to make myself. But love grows complicated when stories are told about you before you’re old enough to know they’re stories. When someone whispers that I am a shadow you must fear, a thief you must guard against, a villain you must name to stay loyal. And so you did. Year after year, you hurled the words that were never yours, trying to keep your mother’s love intact by breaking mine. Still~ I never stopped loving you. Not more, not less, but differently: the way a heart learns to hold a child it cannot claim, to stay soft even when misunderstood, to forgive what was planted long before the child ever asked the question. If you ask me now who I love more, I will tell you this: Love is not a contest or a crown. It is a kaleidoscope—shifting, refracting, turning hurt into understanding, turning fear into mercy, turning me into someone who can hold you gently even when you call me by the wrong name. I love you in the only way I can—with the quiet, stubborn hope that someday you’ll see me not as the story you were given, but as the woman who kept choosing you even when you couldn’t choose me back. You may read the related memoir vignette at: poetrysoup.com/short_stories/the_kaleidoscope_effect_13946
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