The Spaces Between
Mother forgets how to hold her spoon today
& I watch her fingers tremble like autumn leaves
before the fall. There are spaces now
where her memory used to live.
She calls me by my father's name,
then my brother's, then a name
I've never heard before—each syllable
a small death we share between us.
In the mirror, she sees a stranger
wearing her favorite blue dress,
asks me why that woman stole her clothes.
I tell her she's beautiful. She believes me,
the way children believe in tomorrow.
Some days, she speaks to the walls
in a language made of scattered light
& broken teacups. Some days,
she remembers everything at once:
the smell of rice cooking in 1962,
her wedding dress, my first steps,
the taste of snow in her homeland.
I collect these moments like seashells,
store them in my pocket where
they click together, making music
of what remains.