Toffee

The breeze catches my skin as I gaze at your retreating form

Your back is a scrawny gazelle

The t-shirt clings like a doey hide

Your legs pump the pedals with all the intensity of my maternal heart

You aren’t moving very fast.

Over asphalt refuse and destination’s allure

Your red bicycle carries you from my person

And my organs weep

I can feel my soul, my purpose

Clatter, shatter, dare to hope.

I am only a silhouette in a lonely doorway

You are riding away from me

It is what I long for you to do

What I spend my time preparing you to do

And I miss you before I say goodbye.

I miss you as I halt, stiff and unnerved in the glare of your horizon eyes

Your toffee face slightly melted in the red tired sun

Reflecting the particles of hair that I long to brush aside

Tufts of which salute me when I’m the mom I should be

And flip me off when I am less than I know I could be.

Your cheeks shift over the black bicycle seat

You dangle your foot until your momentum is stifled

Your hat hides your face as you look over your shoulder at me

The mere mortal who gave you birth

“Tell my sister I love her.”

I attempt to form a word

My brain unable to render my tongue muscles useful

So overcome am I

But my arm escapes its jailer

Finally free of inept uncertainty it waves at you.

And you unsullied, unburdened continue on

Further and further past the scarlet octagon

That flashes the word I so often mutter

And which I long to cry out at this moment

But I won’t.

I can no longer see you

Though my heart is still holding on to yours like a hand

Fingers entwined and I glimpse the future

The curb where you will exit stage right for two years

Where every respiration will conjure your reality to my remembrance.

You are the embodiment of my divinity

You are the bearer of my guilt

The reminder of my potential

You are the reason that mothers and sons are wrapped up together in knots

Twiny, impossible, frayed, woven, intricate.

You slay me and I die over and over again

Into the inferno that is motherhood

A searing heat which burns out all that is unnecessary, impure

And you my son rake aside the carnage and cradle what is left:

My soul.