By Phibby Venable
All my mother’s words live around here,
and I am always placing them in whatever order
I can remember.
They hold the door open each morning, and suggest
I have a better gratitude and attitude,
for being alive
I stretch my eyes all over the sky, I lean up
and look over the mountains
My mother could be anywhere.
Her warm hand stifling a laugh
Her expressive eyes rolling toward this person
and that, so that we share the laugh,
so that I carry her whispers,
spread into a wild confetti of little conversations
The timing of my heart opening
to give her room.