An Excerpt from “Fading into Bloom”

As we draw nearer to the launch of this little poetry collection of mine, I can’t help but reflect on some of its poems and what inspired them.

From the confines of your silence,
you inspire me to be
free, wild, and a little reckless—
all the things you can’t be anymore.

During the past year, when I would sit with my mother after she had lost the ability to communicate with words, I wondered about how she viewed her own life.

What dreams did she have, but give up? What made her feel the most alive in her life? How did her perspective of life change after she became a mother?

I would hold her slender hand and imagine her in her prime, diving in the salty waters off the coast of South Florida, going on those first dates with my father, picking fresh mangos, dancing on Saturday nights, and perhaps daydreaming about her future.

My hope is that she felt fulfilled in the end, before the late stages of her dementia.

There are far more questions that I have for her that will remain unanswered, but now I choose to live a life inspired by my favorite qualities of hers. A life with zest, with laughter, with dark chocolate biscotti dipped in my coffee and wind-blown hair.