Now We Are Truly Sisters

For all of my beloved single mothers

I remember leapfrog and jump rope in Elementary. I remember when being smart made you popular instead of being pretty. When mess was something you made on the floor with crayons and coloring books. Some days I reminisce and laugh out loud about how important it was that you not be seen in the mall with your parents. Things seem so different now. As I wrap my arms around you and our protruding bellies collide. Mine from drinking too much of that libation they call family. Yours from swallowing too many of those magic beans fabled to turn into love. They bean stalked in your womb. And we are truly sisters now. As we both hear the song of you’re too young and are shame-faced because we love the fathers of our children. Yes, we are truly sisters now. As we share a pair of sleepless night baggied eyes but smile and all the while rhapsodize about the joys of motherhood. We are truly sisters now. As our once happy breasts begin to cry every time our dependent daughters empty them of sustenance. And in a few years we’ll be too old to remember and too young to forget the times when we held parties that adults attended. In a few years we’ll be set in our careers and tomorrow will be the same as today. And we’ll be sisters then. Discussing honor roll and curfew and car notes. Exchanging Christmas cards with tears in our eyes. We’ll be sisters when… We both look back and cry because we were too young for our lives to have ended this way. And on our daughters’ wedding days we’ll scream the same lyrics our mothers did at the top of our lungs as we give them away… To live with dirty diapers, bills to pay, a husband, laundry piled up for days. And we’ll be sisters once again, when we embrace them, wipe their tears away, and quietly wonder but never say: WHAT THE HELL WERE WE THINKING?! © Joi Miner