Ma

I cannot say that this poem is based on real events. Perhaps a more apt explanation would be that the scope of the events of my life was stretched slightly farther by my imagination, and by the understanding that these events have brought. So here it is - Ma.

MA

She stood waiting

While the blackness blinded her eyes.

From a distance she heard

The familiar echo of footsteps.

“Ma!” she whispered into the darkness of the alley,

So meekly

That only her mind could hear.

The night of age had engulfed her mother,

Pestilence, her body.

The footsteps stopped.

She thought she heard someone breathe.

She thought she heard her Ma standing beside her

Crying, heaving,

Trying to quiet the storm in her heart,

Still trying to hide her tears.

“Does your throat still hurt, Ma?”

She wanted to ask.

She reached out to touch her mother’s face.

All she caught was thin air.

“Ma…” she called out again

This time, more to the world than herself.

She saw her mother’s face

Perplexed, afraid, determined.

For a few seconds,

No one exhaled.

The vacuum in the air

Seeped into her skin,

Into her heart.

She heard footsteps again,

Going away from her.

In the mental disquiet

She silently heard her mother walk away.

She didn’t call out this time.

She didn’t follow the echo.

She understood.

For seventy five years

Her Ma had walked a path chosen for her.

In death, she must choose her own.