my mother is still alive
and yet i grieve her
the way people grieve ruined cathedrals—
still standing,
but emptied of the thing that made them holy.
she is in our hometown
washing rice, folding clothes,
asking if we have eaten enough,
while entire versions of herself
rot quietly beneath the floorboards of duty.
sometimes i catch it—
a flicker in her face
when she speaks about the girl she was
before we arrived like small hungers
with school uniforms and fevers
and mouths always opening for more.
god, i did not know
that childhood feeds on mothers.
i did not know
that every comfort she gave us
was cut from the fabric of her own life,
that while i was becoming a person
she was becoming less of one.
and the cruelest part is this:
she loves us enough
to call the ruin worth it.
meanwhile i stand here
twenty-something years later,
holding the unbearable inheritance
of finally seeing her—
not as “mom,”
but as a woman
who disappeared so slowly
no one noticed until her exhaustion
became the atmosphere of the house.
i want to return her to herself.
i want to hand back the years
like stolen objects.
her sleep.
her laughter.
the life she kept postponing
until postponement became permanent.
but all i can do
is watch her carry love
like a wound that never closed,
and understand too late
that some mothers spend their whole lives
dying in ways gentle enough
for their children not to notice.