I am a mother,
but I love my mother
like she is my daughter—
a love that reaches across time,
tender and fierce,
something deep, ancient,
something beyond even blood.

When she is sad,
I become the hands she once was,
reaching back in time,
to brush her hair like I am the one
who knows the weight of her dreams.

She never had it easy—
my mother, the quiet warrior
who wore her wounds like jewelry,
the woman who folded away her laughter
in the bottom drawer,
saving it for some later that never came.

I wish I could hand her back
the stars she lost in her youth,
take her by the hand
and show her the world,
not as a mother, but as a woman
who danced in the rain once,
who had wild hopes
and tender secrets,
before we, her children,
arrived and became the center of her life,
before she wrapped herself
in the cloth...