Morning Poem

Morning Poem

I love the way she strolled along the morning light
after she woke to the alarm going off in her deepest sleep.
I watched my mother flick her index finger
To turn her routine into what it was every morning just before the day broke.
I thought that it was her own personal joke that she cried to,
as I lay half-awake in the world, that defined her mornings.
Never did I know or contemplate what the rising of the hour meant to her,
I assumed she was exactly like me,
only bothered by when the temperature of the faucet,
made my skin feel like a million jelly fish stings.
She fussed over how the kettle boiled before she was ready.
Fussed over the spoon,
not quite dry from the evening wash cycle that was caked with fresh coffee grinds,
Fussed to eliminate the stray hair from her brow
That made her feel unkempt.
She never woke me to chaos.
She wove a curtain around her to shield me from what made her …
Her.
My mother only woke me to the stillness and content she worked to create,
like the fleeting morning dew on the cacti in the desert,
waiting to be slurped to survive.
It was one of these morning rituals that felt like a ballet set to the most obscure of melodies,
I felt that I was seeing the beginnings of a maturing girl,
persuaded to see what a woman truly succumbed to.
What my mother could know ahead of my time to warn me.
The maturity, within me,
was what tricked me into womanhood