Between Bruises and Blooms

They speak in easy sentences,
as though motherhood
is measured by a single meal.

A chicken nugget.
A bedtime missed.
A moment caught
without the thousand
that came before it.

They don’t count
the mornings I rose
before the sun remembered my name.
They don’t count
the tiny hands reaching,
the tears I soothed,
the stories I read
for the hundredth time.

They don’t carry
the grocery bags,
the sleepless nights,
the invisible calendar
living inside my mind.

Still,
they hand me opinions
like feathers,
never realizing
I’m already carrying
an entire sky.

It is easy
to judge a photograph.
Harder
to understand a life.

So I’ll keep choosing
what gets my children fed,
what keeps them laughing,
what helps us make it
to tomorrow.

Because love
has never been measured
by perfect meals.

It has always been measured
by showing up—
again,
and again,
and again.

And while the voices
keep telling me
how they think I should mother,

my daughters
will remember
who was there.