Semi-colon

i have stopped calling them, my memory fades, its yellowing pages, crinkled, can turn to crumbs, i ask you to not touch my nursery rhymes, my mother got me the the book even though she couldn't read; i read, she beams with joy, i don't know how to tell her knowing the coloniser's language is not a marker of success, i lie, i tell her i have made it in life, perched on a branch above hers, the same tree, the same flower, i breathe, she breathes through me, i hover, she hovers for me, i feel burdened by this transactional existence, she calls it love, i feel incapable of giving back, and i pause, and i look into her eyes and make false promises, the real ones cannot be fulfilled, and she knows in her heart that there's more i don't say than i do, and she tries to read the silences, and she tells me, in us she sees herself and her mother, and i shed a tear but quickly wipe away lest she sees begins to worry again, and she tells me the pages of her nursery rhymes had the same birds as mine, its pages just as crinkled and its cover just as dusty, and i've got nothing to hide when she says life is but a series of semi-colons;
;
;
;