There she is
Dancing in the ivory clouds
Rosy-cheeked and butterfly-winged
Her laugh floats to me like bubbles across the sky
She bounces, flashing a pearly tooth
Her plump thighs curling in and kicking out
Fingers plucking at the candy floss
She twirls and falls back onto the misty trampoline
She is free.
And for a second, she catches me looking at her
And it’s like springtime all over again
The kind I’d only read about in books
The kind only she can make me feel
And the last few decades apart have only been but a few minutes of yearning
All the hopes and dreams I had wished she could have lived out spread out before me
But instead, she smiles
And we speak through our eyes all the words we had lost for so long.
The sunlight catches her breath
And all the pocketed love notes drift between us like quavers and crotchets on a music sheet
We giggle
The familiar joy erupting out of our hearts and into each other’s
She tells me that she’s okay
And her happiness waves over me
For that’s all a mother wants to see
So, I close my eyes
And when I open them again, I find her in the clouds no longer
Perhaps simply out of my line of sight
But maybe just over a hill, in the clouds, merely on the other side.
