Just To Make You Cry

I see you when you think I’m not looking, when I’m scrubbing dishes, standing at the window, your arms and legs a hundred miles a minute through the grass of the backyard, your hair in a stream of gold behind your neck, your feet carrying you from one end of the earth to another.

I see you when you are alone, dancing to jazz standards in a ballet leotard, pink with glittered straps
across the carpet of your room elbows slightly bent, toes pointed you learned in class, head and chin tilted up, you leap across the carpet taking flight, during a supposed nap.

I see you when you think I’m too busy, between moments of direction; do this, don’t do that, are you listening to me? Between morning oatmeal, lunchtime questions (how do dogs pick things up?) and evening books, when you are eager to know if Alice makes it back up that hole.

I see a girl with eyes that wonder everything, stopping to see that a bird does in fact have a red breast. I see a girl tenderly touching a blade of grass, just one to see if it’s soft or coarse or nothing
at all. I see you, my girl, from all angles, all sides, right and left, up and down every corner of your soft heart and curious mind.

I see you. It is everything else that is the periphery.

 
 
I found this poem on the 52 figs blogsite. a beautiful poem from mother to daughter I thought.