santos scribes

it doesn’t have to make you hard 

it can make you soft, it can soften you still

just as different water runs the same rock 

over & again and over & again 

you are proof, existential pudding  

that our existence can exist  

without the love, without the esteem of our mothers 

it’s unnatural sure and not without bereavement 

but it happens, it’s survivable is what i mean to say 

unlike say earth without her sun 

or your body without just 180 seconds of its breath 

that’s all it takes 

it’s complicated, i know- (god do i know) 

but it was always going to be, you know? 

she was your corporeal beginning  

her body: your spirits first (or second or third) landing  

where you first began to stretch and dream and explore yourself; to form 

and still, it doesn’t have to harden you 

it can soften you 

like water 

or the breath  

like silken rocks that get passed over still  

about this poem

I wrote this poem with some of the most cherished & important people in my life in mind, all of whom have some sort of disconnection with or from their mothers. this idea of living without our mothers can absolutely be taken literally, to mean living in this world without the physical anchor & origin a mother represents but it’s my over arching hope here that the poem in some way represent the complexities and the choices inherent in all mother-child relationships ~ thanks for reading & happy mothers day! xo, s.