• How could I know I would miss you so much
• When missing you was such
• An everyday thing?
• How could I know I would long for your touch,
• Perpetually so distant.
• How could I know it would be so insistent?

• At the break of mid-day,
• I reach for a hand that is no longer there;
• I strain to hear
• The soft, firmness of a voice I so seldom heard;
• To see emptiness filled by reading a word:
• A name,
• Your name,
• Yet, not even yours.

• How could I know in my fantasy
• That good bye would be
• A word so filled with reality,
• A world so full of finality
• How could I know?

• I held my child in the palms of my hands.
• Perfectly formed s/he seemed.
• Little hands clenched in fists
• Firmly grasping the tenuous thread of life,
• Now broken.
• A spirit flying swiftly by,
• Touching me briefly and gently
• With wings of a butterfly

Only a bump in the road.
Is that all he was to you, Momma?
Don’t you remember how eager you were
To hold him that very first time.
Is that all there is, Momma?
Was I that way too?
A bump in the road to you?

Life is a road that’s filled with bumps
Of trials and tribulation.
But we all want the time
To get over the humps.
To face the aggravation.
To raise our arms in victory.
To load our own artillery.
To find the way it was meant to be.

Didn’t you want that, too, Momma?
Or was it different for you?