I Can Be a Mother Poem

I can be a mother poem.
Afixed tentacles to dripping life
Off countertops.
From teardrop eyes.
Pain that does not know tomorrow.
Only tiny sadness
Without me.
A mother poem.

They sing me into song.
Roll me off a new day's tongue.
"I will" never talked so funny.
Twisted in drawl when he's never been south.
And she, she painted her ocean

Deep sparkly purple because she said
It matched my eyes.
I cried because her eyes match mine
And all that swims below.

She swam away. Turned blank sky orange.
Ran right back to show me
Her color invention.
A poem of this world that did not exist
Until she did.

They fit me into their every sensory world.
Tell me, "Teach."
Ask me, "Stay."
Sometimes I cry, "I can't."
They laugh and don't believe me.

They write my lines with their feet.
Courage with their hands.
Inside their mittens, warm and winter.
So very, very small.
They cling, hang, wrap, and sleep
Daytime dreams and nightlight slumber
To the beat, beat, beat of this
Mother poem.