MY MOTHER CYBER-DATES

She is strong, able to appear emotionless,
Ready to move on, but my mother hurts.
Her heart crumbles even as she sits before the computer
sending email to a man she has never met.
She made a date with one last month,
called it a CO2 date,
“no sparks,” she says laughing into the phone.

 

In my youth, her strength seemed hard and
I never realized how deeply I cut her,
how much blood was shed from her heart,
a heart I thought was
puncture-proof.

 

Now, we share our painful moments,
commiserate over betrayals,
and thank one another for “being there.”

 

The distance that once separated us
has become a geographical nuisance.
The once insurmountable differences,
a no-longer-hurdle we step over hand-in-hand,
like a cracked sidewalk we avoid in
superstitious reverence and fear.

 

And I, now a mother of step-children,
find that I have a hard strength to me,
a strength I use to cover up the pain of separation,
the distance I use as a shield
to allay the anxiety of departure and
the sadness of good-byes.

 

I have raised the banner of stern discipline
to slay the beast of closeness and
avoid reliving the feelings of an outsider
by remaining outside the sphere of emotion.

 

But when the cuts come, my heart will bleed.
My heart that has never been puncture-proof.

 

And I will call my mother, and we will share our pain,
commiserate over betrayals,
thank each other for “being there,”
and ultimately
laugh into the phone.