Mom

Precisely she writes.
Filling the pages with
each school girl letter.
The letters still carry
a bit of their girlish charm
but they have grown quick
and straight over the solid years.

She has cleaned like she writes,
with precision.
Learning slowly and thoroughly
what she likes,
and in her millions
of tiny and not so tiny discomforts,
discovers more of herself.

She spills over years
of wisdom, first to her own.
Brought into the world
by her pain.
These two people,
with their own ideas,
are slowly learning
to ask her questions,
and to hang on her every word.

She opens her mouth also,
to the world's tiniest questioners,
telling them the basics of life.
Math, letters, history, science.
They will never be the same
because of her.

Today, she looks out
through a fall of tears and cracking red,
and she hunches her small shoulders,
screaming the loss of her own teacher,
her reason why,
the very woman who brought
her into being, in pain.
And she stands short,
reaches out her hands,
and her children come,
their mother's son and daughter,
they stand next to her
and it is right.