April is National Poetry Month. Honoring a threshold for yourself or your child can be marked by writing a simple piece of poetry. Bittersweet. Insanely happy. Contentedly present. All are valid emotions and valid ways of marking the passages in our lives. Here’s one I wrote marking my daughter’s 13th year awhile back:
A Chunk of Me
walked out the door
with size 2 pants and a
skateboard shirt.
I don’t know how
to bring her back;
she will experience my world
in size 12-year-old thoughts,
I will experience hers
in size 39.
I reel back the invisible
fishing line
I’ve attached to her
ankles
in the hope of synthesizing
her soul back into mine,
but like all good fish,
she slips away.
– Gina Marie Mammano
Shining Bridges 