Old, Borrowed, and Blue

My grief is borrowed

Just as my joy, my love, my life

I live through an extension of my mother

An umbilical cord never cut

A parallel life that waits for doom

That remembers the all too familiar milestones

The celebrations, the successes, the great fall

And so I count my time

Constantly ticking, I look over my shoulder

I hear the laughter like an echo in a chamber

Trapped, forever observing a scene from another life

Looming over what is, and would surely come to be

As 35 approached, I clawed at the calendar

I braced myself to stand alone, be everything

Be my mother

But the boy I saw looked at himself grey in the mirror

Relief surely now, surely finally

Replaced quickly with another 

Unexpected grief

Of moving on without my daughter

And then I look in the mirror,

And suddenly see my mother

Still there, still laughing

And I pause to wonder

If my something old, something borrowed, something blue

Is not grief, not fear,

But the present

Still here, still beating.