My mother’s eyes, dark denim blue, asking me to be okay. I wonder what it was like for her to witness her baby at her lowest, if she ever considered teenage heartbreak for me when she hardly knew it herself. I hope she knows how much I wish to protect her, and how badly I want her to have experienced a childhood of cliched normalcy. I yearn for her to have known the feeling of having a mother to cry to about the boy who didn’t confess about the other girl. I wish her body felt the warmth of her mother like I’ve had for 24 years. Sleeping in her bed several nights in a row after he left, and memorizing the tone of emphatic love in her voice when she shook me by my shoulders: ”You need to snap out of it! You need to take care of yourself!”
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