I.
Several weeks ago,
I gave a woman all of the cash in my wallet.
Fifty-two dollars.
Because she looked like my mother.
She sat on a milk carton,
in snow. Outside a restaurant.
She said to me “God bless you.”
And I just walked away.
Several weeks later,
I spoke to my therapist about the woman.
About my hate for a world.
A world that would treat my mother with such contempt.
II.
I learned the other day.
That my family lied to me.
When I was in sixth grade, and my mother began to decay.
They said that she would be okay.
Even at the time,
they knew she did not have time.
That she would be lucky to make it two years.
Perhaps now I know why she cried so much when I drove a car for the first time.
I learned the other day,
that ten years ago, my mother would say
that she would just like to see me be happy
and maybe a couple of grandkids.
I wonder now,
what my mother would say.
Now that I am unable to have children
and still so unhappy.
III.
Twenty years ago,
I told my father that I hated the world.
He scolded me. Stating
that I should not hate everything.
There is not much else to feel for a world.
That forces me. Over and over and over.
To watch the women in my life die.
Watch them twist in pain and die without sunshine.
The woman. On the milk carton.
She had the same gaunt, sunken face
that my mother did.
On the day that she died.
In the face of watching yet another woman
grow close to unnecessary death.
Yet again, I did the bare minimum,
averted my eyes, ran away, and began to cry.
Just as I have always done.