Life Wires
~for my daughter
My attempts to connect —
my tried-and-true way
to once again bring an incandescent
laugh to your eyes, a glimmer of a
smile — my efforts seem to only short us
out. What remains is this flickering —
yet constant — erratic — yet unending —
coil of light.
Within this fragile rime-like globe, once clear,
now frosty or dust-laced, perhaps — a brittle glass
spun from years together. And as the
room dims, the years apart are almost as many.
I remember when you were new. The switch —
easily tripped. Then — and I’m not sure when —
our wiring seemed only to cross.
I thought I hadn’t moved at all: thought we were
a fixture, one that could withstand any
surge. But I watched as you sought-out
tangles of red, blue, yellow…seeking
anything but the green-ground
I’d thought I’d hard-wired in and
under your feet
so well. How silly of me to think it:
to believe it was simply matter of
winding copper to copper. To call forth
a spark without really seeing how different
your casing. I didn’t know color-blindness
ran in mothers. That when I perceived us
as this singular thing under one shade, you were
this ray and glint without me; one who lit
my skies in a lambent, radiant glow.
I hadn’t noticed you’d found your own
flare and spark. Here, I’d been waiting
to flip the breaker; resetting us back in time to
on. I forget, and once again
I blew it — and the house goes dark.
Though our burned-out filament
still glows within the pitch,
I don’t know how, time and again, I miss it:
how — each time I reach for you — the tiny
shocks I give seem to elude my frayed ends
until the blowout, the hurt confusion to your face
at the sharpness of the shock. It isn’t any
wonder, then, that we stay
both connected and separate
in this room and place of
mother-daughter-
mother-daughter…
My task was never to wire you in, secured to
my base. A forever-shared socket,
matching watts, with a singular coil of
captured star-light. My role was, and is,
to simply let you dance with the many
zings and faros on this world’s stage. And in that game,
you have become a player who birthed her own élan vital,
a vim and voltage that carries you away from my
constant plugs. Your illumination, a dazzling crystal
array: pendants and pendulums, sparkling and fine
in a home, in a room, in a place of your own
where you
are your very own light. Yes, it’s difficult
to let you go even still; to realize and know that
I was just the first glimmer of what lay ahead —
a flicker you needed for only a short
time; a spark from which you drew, only until
you found your own gleam and glow. And you
light up — up to the whole sky
of The World: the one thing I’d wanted
(Oh, how I tried but failed) to give you. But
the world — it was never mine to
give. And my world was not
meant for you.
In the end, it was never my sky you were
destined to light, nor make brilliant, endless and
warm. It was — and will be — forever-
more and more,
always — yes, only —
for you, you and yours.
~J.A. Carter-Winward
