When you are sick. I am nauseous.
When you are thirsty. I am parched.
When you are in pain. I am in agony.
When you have heart ache. My own heart breaks.
When you cry. My own eyes run rivers.
And it is not enough.
If I could but take all of your sickness. Your thirst. Your pain. Your heart ache. Your tears.
I would.
All of it.
All at once.
Not only would I take it.
I want it.
For my nutrients were once your nutrients. My blood became your blood. I once breathed air for you. The breath of life into you.
How is it then that I can not control the elements of your being?
I created you.
Yet I cannot control you.
Or the illness that strikes you. The sun that beats down on you. The movement in your body. Or the movement of another’s harsh words rolling from their tongue like a knife to your heart.
I once moved for you.
You once moved in me.
And there are no movements I can make to change the circumstances that face you.
It is every mother’s battle.
The inability to take on their children’s trials.
It is a war every mother would gladly fight.
We have polished our armor. We have sworn our oaths. Our swords belong to you, my children.
We are an army ready. Waiting. Eager.
We run our hands over your fevered brows and then those same hands tighten on our swords.
We wait for an opponent that will never face us.
Directly.
For although your life is yours, my child.
When the sickness, thirst, pain, heartache and tears come, I want it for my own.
What is mine will always be yours.
What is yours is yours.
Not mine.
Yours.
And I crumble next to you from the harsh truth of those words.
The ugliness of those five unchangeable letters.
As I search for the unsearchable. As I beg for the unattainable. As I reach for the unreachable. And I hope for the impossible.
I will wipe your brow of your heat, your eyes of your tears, your back of your worries, your mouth of your sickness, your shoulder in your pain.
I may not be able to take any of those troubles from you. But my heart. My soul.
My hands.
They are yours.
