“Hello Mother.”

When I see my mother, my heart sinks low.

My throat closes as I try to form an acknowledgement

But I can’t bring myself to say “mom.”

I was never allowed to call her by her first name

Which wouldn’t work for me anyway.

So, instead of the casual word of “mom,”

I thickly say “mother.”

“Mother” is the word for the person that birthed me.

I’m not sure why she chose to.

Maybe to keep her man around, away from his wife.

I am not grateful for being given life for this reason:

To fulfill the delusions of a person starved for intimacy.

When he left with my half brother and the woman,

“Mother” needed to move on.

She still says I chose to stay home, close to Grandma.

Either way, I’m thankful she left me there.

Grandma didn’t slap me. Only yelled.

“Mother” left to attend to my brother with her new man.

He was a good man. Better than any “father.”

He was my dad.

But my mother was mean to him.

She told my brothers he was no good.

She kicked him out of the house.

She took his paycheck.

My dad could only do so much. He wasn’t perfect.

I stayed home with Grandma most of the the time.

Nobody could protect me from the reservation predators.

Evil got to me before I turned 5.

My mother said they checked my p****.

And that was evidence enough against him.

And evidence of how she sees me.

She’d call me mean and hateful for years after that.

I tried living with her.

When dad went to jail “mother” pursued her other men.

She didn’t feel like paying bills or cleaning house no more.

I became pregnant.

Dad came home.

We had temporary peace and I went back to Grandma’s.

When “mother” tells me my son doesn’t love me,

Or that my lover doesn’t want me,

When she says my friends are her friends,

I would believe her.

After a man found my body in a field,

Hurt by a bad boyfriend,

“Mother” was angry I wasn’t nicer to him.

How could I have picked a woman beater?

She had no idea “how that one happened.”

She had no idea how stupid I was to wear shorts to school years before,

That showed the welts on my legs from belts.

She also had no idea how I could have been touched,

Or why I don’t welcome him into my life.

“Mother.”

I can’t swallow this word. I get the chills.

I become feverish and afraid.

I couldn’t understand this until many years later,

When my boy has almost become a man.

That he doesn’t feel the same way about this word.

Despite what “mother” said,

He comes to me. He tells me things.

He says he loves me.

Maybe he couldn’t when he was a baby,

But he would quiet down when I was around.

My Grandma is gone now. I miss her every day.

I will be alone soon, when my baby leaves me for the world.

I sit here and wonder what it must feel like for him;

Safety and comfort. To be held for happy and sad things.

I will never know what “a mother’s love” feels like.

But I’m happy to be able to give it to those who need it.

“Mother” is alone too…far away from me.