(Implicated TW: lowkey sa)

From an elementary stage of my life, I have been mothering a fifty-year-old man into complacence. Very little of him still exists in my mind, but vaguely, I remember hands splayed over my stomach like the claws on a palm frond, with the same burn and bite. There is a blurry, candid shot of his mouth, cruel and uncanny, and a still life portrait of his baby blue eyes pee...

Someone is standing over me, and I think it's the Sun. For a moment she looked just like you, kissing my cheeks, stretching over my hips, my wrists, adorning me with praising rays of shimmer. So close to her, I am. She could not be you, I realize.

And the mourning doves are wading through the martyr's trench, enveloping my body, rebirthing me through the crest of the moon's giving tree. Through t...

Westward lives a boy, blistered and blue as the sea. He sailed through the heights of life with a storm's cloud overhead--oh so turbulent were the waters--but he had the hope of a prophet and the patience of a saint to guide him through shipwreck when the hull was battered by calamity.

With his funny, fickle features, he ventured toward a belly of treasure that they'd called good fortune, cranin...

(Depression, denial, reflection).

I am struck that every moment I spend with her can spontaneously be the last,

that this may be her last laugh,

her last sunset smile,

before I am left without her marigold soul.

Dusk and dawn are warring with each other, each to consume the time I'm clinging to,

because soon I will be older,

and she will be older too.

How am I to cope with that?

Maternity...