Mama

Mamma's fallin' apart, little bits and pieces in test tube jars spread out in a row across God's time line.

Mom's lived a lifetime in hospital beds, bits of her female identity sawed off, used for study purposes by sterile faced doctors, replaced by prosthesis, and she smiles.

She had 3 babies she says.

She's lived a lifetime.

Mamma's fallin' apart.

A bit here, a bit there, till nothin' and she's part mechanical.

Started losing her hair a few months ago, and before that her womb.

No more babies now, but she got all she wanted and aren't we somethin'!

Mamma says all she ever wanted was this, all she ever wanted was us, all she ever wanted was my fathers love, and somethin' in me says I should scream at all her could have beens, but isn't that the thing.

Mamma taught me how to love.

Mamma taught me how to be.

Mamma made sure I knew how to be free, and not from wanting for herself, proud, strong, woman that she is, she had everything.

Mamma made herself 3 independent little girls that grew up to take on the world.

She rejoiced in creation.

This was her life's dream.

Once her work was done here her only desire was to see the world she gave her gift to, and...

Mamma's fallin' apart.

It's not enough she lived to be a woman, and had no shame in her simple aspirations.

We can call it a generational brainwashing, women staying barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but she came from a single mother home, raised by one tough bull of a woman that no matter what anyone told her she was gonna do her thing, and raise her children on her own.

Mamma knew her options.

I've never known her to be afraid of anything.

Now she may be losing everything, and...

Mamma's fallin' apart.

copyright 11/18/98