Nightingale.

I stood there helplessly, drowning in defeat, darkened by my inability to breathe life into your rusted heart’s resilient beat, a symphony I memorized in forty weeks from the inside. Incapable of returning you

to the raven-haired beauty of your prime, I bite my tongue until I’m numb, as my lips are sewn shut with twine.

You heal me when you hold me, as though I am still your innocent, little child. I am haunted by the trauma when I will one day find that I can no longer turn to you for comfort, or the reassurance of your smile. I know I run but I am frightened, as I see you become so frail; my mind refuses a reality where you are not my nightingale.

Your song lulled me into slumber, as you softly sang the world to sleep; if only I had looked at you long enough to see that all you were ever doing was trying to love me. There is no bond like that between a mother and her only son, even if he is less deserving of her pride than of her scorn.

And yet, even now,

I know your love has never once been measured by what I earned.

It was there in every warning, every sacrifice, every prayer you uttered under your breath when life turned cruel.

I have not always known how to receive devotion that wasn’t dressed as danger. I have not always honoured the woman who built me with her body, then kept rebuilding me with her mercy.

But if grief is the tax we pay for having been loved well, then I will pay it trembling. I will pay it in remembrance. I will pay it by carrying your tenderness into a world that made you far stronger than you should’ve ever had to be.

Mama,

if one day your voice is gone from this earth, it will still remain stitched through mine.