My mamas hands have gone cold to the touch.

She'd freeze there in her chair by the window watching the outside world so still. She could've been a statue in a garden, surrounded by all the ferns and little palm leaf trees and bouquets around her.

She sure was pretty enough to be one and

my mama's frozen and I don't know how to thaw her

how to warm her enough.

It feels like frost bite when

I press my cheek to her soft hands and kiss her knuckles with my sorry lips

she sits,

sometimes, she sighs as a warm breeze passes through to say hello

or a blue jay sits on the balcony to greet her its grey chest breathing fast it's blue wings quicker.

sometimes, days like the one he died on come rollin in beautiful enough to have the dead reaching in their graves for some warmth,

those are the days that a sob so chopped and troubled bubbles out of her stomach and into the air

that my heart shakes in fear.

When the train passes she's as still as his body and as still as his breath

when she hears that whistle her eyes glaze over and breath hitches in her lungs like she doesn't want to breathe.

I'm still here, I say.

I cook for her and clean and–

I'm here.

I read her a scripture and give her ginger tea in the nice china with the lily painted on it

place a comfy knit blanket on her shoulders for the cold summer nights and keep a pitch of mint lemonade out for the warm.

I put on her favourite records–

my mama likes Etta James she used to sing like her too–and brush her puffy black hair into a bun while I hum to the tune of her songs.

But my mama,

her bones are chilled over by the frost of January in June and when she moves it feels like time slows

it sounds like the titanic crashing into an iceberg she's sinking and I don't know how to pull her up,

and I'm here.

I'm here, I tell her

and she looks at me and past me all at once I see

no love in her eyes.

I see

the son she wants in the reflection that should be me

I see pain so big it carries weight and presses on her bones till they brittle and crack

and

doe brown skin barely clinging to something solid and

eyes and smile withered, with lines on em like lightening

and the face of a God of war and a heart of a lion and–

I'm here

I whisper while

her eyes are on the quiet moon

and that's still more

than anything he can do.