Trails

My mother counts time in her tears.

On her lap they vainly disappear.

Her eyes look like lonely dirt trails, beckoning me

to walk onto them back into her little girl

so she can be the mom she should have been,

but no one can rewind the world. 

I want to hug her still body 

and occupy those trails with the clarity 

of my womanly presence

for I hold nothing in my hands , but the present. 

The tears roll across her cheeks that look like mine

across her lips that question why she wasted so much time.

She looks pale as if frozen and it's not that I am ignoring

the ice in her words,

it's just that for me life just blazes forward.