September 13th

Dear mother, if it was easy to say the words that I feel would they still hold meaning or would they be dull like the shallow breaths you once took? Would my life still hold meaning now that I no longer have to force a smile even though on the inside I was dying watching the light fade from your eyes.

Dear mother, can you still hear me mother? Your birthday was 15 days in counting. Do you know that it's past a fortnight from your birthday and I'm still carrying the heaviness in my chest like I've just lost you the night before even though it's been two years since your passing and I'm still waiting for the third in counting.

Dear mother, three children bear the loss of their mother but only one truly suffers the most because they've endured your pain. Then seen the countless nights of sleeping in a dirt stained van with only take out foods to eat because we had no place to call home, not even the people we called family could bear us a room with open arms saying "Take this is a home open for everyone."  I've seen the nights of walking through sandy mud walking to the free land for a better life only to be returned to a land I once called home only to learn I was not a native there but only you and a man I called father. The nights where I would beg you not to go to work because your body was aching but you had a third child on the way and your second man was not suitable enough to change his ways and give us money to fill our aching bellies and heat our small home on those cold nights.

Journal/Freewrite Activity: 2 8/27/14

The temperature reached 103° Fahrenheit in Brownsville, Texas. Heat waves gradually rose from the ground turning Brownsville into a desert. The day was not bright, but rather yellow, as if the the world was a camera, and its effects had been chnaged from normal to sepia. This has been the coldest temperature in ten years.

Grass has been reduced on our lawns like the hair on a forty year olds mans head and our resacas have drained to where if you were flying above us you'd think they were the veins of our torn down city.

The reduction of water and food has brought us down to our barbaric roots. If a single drop were to come from your drain leaving a stain it's sure to follow that a mob of savages will appear with buckets, begging for a drop.

Those with resources have fled the land going to faraway places that support their needs. Many that remain have either nowhere to go or refuse to leave their motherland that breeds them.

We beg for water to return and have received nothing, but our hopes continue, having faith that surrounding cities, states, or governments will save us. Even if we have to wait until our last drop of water.

Mother

I remember when the days were longer
The nights seemed so far away
An aching breath keeping us steady
As you laid on your death bed

Tubes feeding your body things you couldn't say
Words too foreign for your native tongue
Unbearable to watch the heaviness of your chest
Like the weight of the world is on you

Maybe it was, as three children watched you die
Each day a piece of yourself lost
Not too slow but not too fast
Maybe that's why it wqs harder to let go

Perhaps thats why my memory is faded
Parhaps that's why I barely remember your voice
Perhaps that's why my heart aches
For a long lost teacher like yourself