Choices

Even those we make with a lightness of heart

Show its baggage at a point in one’s life

You may be sitting in your home

Having a coffee, delighting in the early day

When comes a call, packed with tales

of your grandma far away

She feels lonely you can hear

but she refused to come live near

You asked her multiple times

But she hates to be dependent on you

Yet freedom has its own weight

And the independence she so dearly proclaimed, stands against her like an army in red

Now she cries those lonely tears

Sometimes drowning them in spirit

And I too wet my pillow at night

Blaming myself for not doing enough

I chose my life, and the place where I live

My mother picked her own

My grandma chose to stay

We are happy, don’t get me wrong

We all would never go back to where we once belonged

But nonetheless some days do come

When those choices hand us the bill

Of all we pay, of all we give

Those days are bitter and I can’t deny

I put everything into question, and cry

Should I go back? Should I sacrifice? Should I go to make her happy? Or rather pray for life to be kind?

I pray.

And cry.

And write poetry until I feel fine.

I should just make peace with never being at peace, knowing a lump of my flesh is somewhere else in pain

But I should leave her choices be hers to bear

Isn’t it a human instinct that to protect those we deem more fragile than ourself?

Yet humans were given two knees, two knees are enough to carry one body and get overused and weak by the extra weight placed upon them – she barely walks. She forgot the last time she went out of the house – in her mind she sometimes thinks it was an hour ago.

It crashes me

I cannot change the reality

I cannot ease her days

I cannot visit her whenever she’d like me to

It lifts me

I can call her and tell her of my day

I tell her I love her and care more than my presence can say

And I choose that that’s the best I can do for today.