Like A Rock

I carry my mother
like a rock in my pocket
that I just can’t
seem to throw away

It serves me
no purpose,
it just weighs me down

***

When I first found it,
when I first
picked it up and
started carrying it with me,

I thought it
so beautiful –

I could look at it
for hours

But, like my mother,
it never looked back
at me,
never grew warm
under my loving gaze

For the longest, I was
blind to that,

Blind to anything but the beauty,
blind to the cold, hard,

Beyond-remote nature of the rock,
of my mother,
my stone

***

I carry my mother,
a thought without weight

And she’s heavier
and she’s colder
than all the stones
there are

***

By the time I recognized
her immutable, emotional unavailability,

I had run out of joy,
felt depleted of hope –

But I could not,
for the life of me,
stop seeking a beauty, a warmth,
inside her heart

Could not stop
wishing
that one day this stone,
my mother,
deep inside my pocket,

Might just become
its own opposite –

Change from hard to fluid,
from cold to warm

But my rock, my hard burden,
will only turn to water

When my mother
stops being
a stone

This won first place out of over 15,000 international entries in Poetrysoup.com's November contest. I hope this speaks to you