July 21 8:42 am

I will at once be both your child and your lover, the girl not afraid to soothe your lonely aches, the woman still willing to let you love her in her own absence of father and need for friend.

Even now in your dying you capture youth and movement as from the dancers you sculpted or the words you found lying on the pages you paint, lifeless but full of love, elaborate and marble strong.

Not all corners are cut to be sharp, you teach me, somewhere men cry for the sake of tears and the shiny pools they leave in my hands when you pull away.

I am at once both mother and the sister you lost, the artist that makes you from stone, the poet who writes down the lines of your fading heart. Life is not the performer you made, instead it is resting on your shoulder, tired and thin, waiting to close its eyes.