Single-Handed

I was a single mothers for many years and dreamed of being saved.


Looking at the sky
for signs of God,
I see the tree
outside my bedroom window
fulfill a destiny without complications.

Stubborn pride
keeps me afloat
when I listen
to my mother's gray-blue stories
about my father leaving her
with a swollen belly
and bruises around her neck;
about marrying the second man
when she wasn't pregnant after all;
about the aches of aging
and merciless regrets.

Where is the white horse,
where the prince
that I read about when I was young,
listening to my Snow White and the Dwarfs record
by my grandmother's sewing machine,
the one I hid under when Santa Claus came one year
prepared to flock me for my bad behavior.

They say each color has an emotion.
Childhood diseases do too:
Chickenpox is angry,
Measles is sad,
Mumps is lonely.