Things that are not at all, are never lost.

Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander

To mom.

You've chosen a man over your family. Such is life. 
I decay. I will flower again. I cannot stay.
Lavender thorns the cherrytree syrup, 
Backlight, the windowsill dances in the distance.
Who did you miss when you sang, Kauaʻi ʻōʻō? 
Swallowing stone of ever-more-memory slow.
Come thou fount of every Holocene;
Trembling winter, the pale pinks peach Nysiades. 
I don't know what to say. You let Saturn swallow me.
Nothing matters more to you than the Harlequin. 
Stop and examine; ask and you shall receive --
You don't have to live in decay, you don't have to stay
I can't do it for you. Deus meus, in conspectu tuo viam meam.
"Another aeroplane, another sunny place."
I can never go home. 

All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.

bell hooks, All About Love

Image: Pietà by Michelangelo (1498-1499)