Love, Mom

My mother is a fearless woman:

She moved to a rural town

To raise me.

All alone.

She is a stubborn woman;

She ruined my life.

My mother claims to be there for me,

But the last time I cried she couldn’t even put her arms around me.

My mother apologized,

But there was no truth in her eyes

That stared just passed my shoulder

In her voice,

Flat as the piece of wood in the front yard 

That she still hasn’t removed even though it’s been there

Since I was seven,

A constant reminder of the dilapidated walls of our broken home.

In her body

Stiff as the clothes hung

Out to dry in the cold of winter

My mother loves me

Or at least, that’s what she tells me.

But no one has loved me since

The resolute woman who ran to me

When I scraped my leg open on the playground;

Too many years ago to count

My mother was a fearless woman.

She did love me,

But now she is a ghost

Waiting to haunt someone else.

Keira Leverock, Grade 12

Creative Writing Major