She is Prose

In one photograph,
my mother is carrying me.

In the other
I am carrying my son.

Same age.

Two women
holding their children
before life asked them
to prove
they could survive
being left.

She had me.

I had him.

And between us
something was left open

not a lesson

not a punishment

just the door
life forgot
to close gently.

My mother was six
when they left her.

Six.

A little girl
in a room
that was not home

a bed
that did not know
her body

a hallway
with no mother
coming through it.

People always have reasons.

Divorce.
Distance.
Survival.
History.
Fear.

But children
do not live
inside reasons.

They live inside rooms.

They listen
for footsteps.

They learn the door
before they learn
the world.

And still

that child
became my mother.

The best mother.

She is prose.

Not simple.

Never simple.

Prose like rice.
Laundry.
Hands.
A forehead checked for fever.
Call me when you get there.

Prose like love
with its sleeves rolled up.

She was a writer

but before I knew
her words on paper

I knew the language
she made in the house.

Food.
Worry.
Sacrifice.

The daily grammar
of staying.

She made motherhood
her full-time work

until it became
the pillars
holding up
our house.

Then there I am

same age

with my son
inside my life

still young enough
to believe
being loved
meant being held.

And life
asked me too.

Not at six.

Not in a school.

But in the room
where a woman
should never be left

with a newborn
and a body
still open
from becoming
a door for life.

I learned then
what my mother
must have known
too early:

that something
can leave the room
and still live
in the body.

But I stayed.

Not beautifully.

Not without fear.

But I stayed.

And maybe
that is what passed
between us.

Not the eyes.

Not the mouth.

The terrible grace
of becoming
the place
a child can return to.

She answered
with a house.

I answered
with my arms.

Two women.

Same age.

Different photographs.

Both carrying
a child
against the oldest
kind of fear.

And still

nothing in us
handed the child
back to the dark.

She stayed.

I stayed.

And maybe
that is the holiest thing
a woman can do

after the door
has taught her
its cruelty

stand there

with the child
in her arms

and refuse
to become
another leaving.