With Love, Your Mother by Darrell Petska

What could she do
when her legs ignored her commands
to walk the rooms she’d groomed
like the children she’d raised through the years?
She wheeled through time and thus carried on.
What could she do
those days she could scarcely drag from her bed
to glimpse her yard’s lush handiwork,
the rampant daisies, nodding hollyhocks, spireas and mums
she once prodded and pushed like unwilling children
toward the fullness of their bloom?
She sorted old photos of her children
swinging, playing ball, singing and dancing,
then tucked them in folders labeled Marie, Jason, and Stu.
When her breath grew too frail to savor her kitchen,
her living room steeped with family auras,
or her nursery drapes bearing baby-fresh
scents of grandchildren bathed and bundled,
she drew life from a cold green tube and prayed her rosary.
And what could she do
when her children gathered to say, “Mom...”
then moved her to a room that smelled of antiseptic,
with a bed that possessed no memories, or at least not her own,
and a window whose view seemed painted on?
That no guilt could dilute her loving family’s loss,
she fought, fought long enough,
then in the peace of night let go.



Darrell Petska is a writer from Madison, Wisconsin. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Buddhist Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Right Hand Pointing, Boston Literary Magazine, Verse-Virtual and Loch Raven Review. See his published work at conservancies.wordpress.com.