There are songs
I wish I could have
sung to you.
Not only
the soft ones.
The ridiculous ones
mothers make up
while rocking
a sleepy child.
Songs about messy hair,
missing socks,
and the little faces
babies make
when they are determined
not to sleep.
I wonder
which songs
would have comforted you.
Which ones
you would eventually
beg me
to stop singing.
I wonder
whether you would
have loved music
the way I do.
Whether we would
have argued
over the radio,
or found a song
that belonged
to only us.
Instead,
I have spent
eleven years
finding you
inside lyrics
you never heard.
A melody begins,
and suddenly
there you are.
Not in my arms.
Not beside me.
But somewhere
in the aching space
between one note
and the next.
And I sing anyway.
Because a mother
does not stop
having songs
for her child
simply because
the child
is no longer here
to hear them.
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