Happy Birthday
It wasn’t all bad.
There were lots of nice moments.
Eventually, though,
the negative outweighed the positive.
Love shouldn’t be conditional.
At least not a mother’s love.
I was not always blameless,
but I was always your son.
I went to therapy.
I took my meds.
I meditated.
I tried.
You grew, too, in some ways,
but not in any that required introspection.
You were swept up in a cycle
started generations before.
I’m typing this alone in my apartment,
left by the person about whom
we had our final fight,
but my son is on his way to visit me,
so maybe the cycle is broken.
/ / /
3 September 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem 44 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day for the 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
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