5,110 Goodnights

The sky is calm,
and I am safe.
The clouds and I,
we don't get along,
for when I leave
my parents' home -
they run.

My mother asks me
where time when:
"I have I lost sight of it all?"
she wonders.
She tells me of days
I cannot remember,
ones that she will not forget,
stories that, when I
look to her eyes,
make her soul sparkle.

Mom often reminds me
I'm growing up too fast.
"I wish you'd stop,"
she says.
All I can do is
nod my head
in unison -
for I, too, agree.

When I come home from school,
Mom is in the living room.
"How was school, Sweety?"
she asks.
Every day I reply with
the same eight letter word:
"Terrible."
Every day she asks why -
though she knows my answer -
so I tell her I'm just tired.

After hard nights of studying,
with Mom curled
on the couch,
I ask if she wants to hear a poem.
At time I fear she'll ask me not to -
"I already know what love is,"
she'd state -
but she never does.

Grabbing my notebook,
with torn up papers
and loose-leaf shreds,
I begin.
Unlike the voice in my head,
I sound dry,
boring,
distraught,
and I fear she'll ask me to stop -
but she never does.

Finally I finish reading, and I
calmly look to my mother
with soft eyes
to see her as she drifts off to sleep -
a place she has not visited in a while -
one almost forgetten.
Subtly, I kiss her forehead goodnight.

Finding a blanket,
one spotted red and white
with wagons and doves,
I throw it over her,
and make sure
evert thread is tucked in
from the tips of her toes
to the ends of her shoulders.

Quietly, I tell her I love her,
with the hope she'd wake up
to silently reply,
"I love you too Sweety" -
and she always does.