By sarah dragonfleyes@excite.com
Date: 14 November 2000
soft sweet smell
my mother used to sing me to sleep
with her soft sweet voice
it was one of the rare moments when
she had a soft sweet voice
and she would let it cradle me
and let it soothe me
when the night had fallen
i remember her smell her soft sweet smell
her motherly smell
the smell of warm flannel against
freshly washed skin
against a weary body
she always tired, and crying
lying down
sometimes she would laugh, and sing
she wrote songs for us sometimes
and she would play them on her guitar
her old guitar with the worn out grooves
the caramel colored wood
she would play it
and then push her glasses up her nose
from where they had slid down
on the bridge
she would touch me with that music
yet she wouldn't hug me
with her warm flannel smell
her sweet motherly smell
i never understood these two things
how she could keep distant yet pull me close
with her smell
my mother
strange, how your mothers affection
can touch you all these years later
when you find it hard
to hug someone else
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