For Young Mothers

people say so many things. . .
like you’re in a game you cannot win,
like your life has all but ended.
but maybe motherhood is a mosaic,
a hard wrought, stained glass window
where tears and laughter collide,
where wounds reopen in the working
and glisten if light filters through.

I am cut, reshaped, pieced back. . .
and I feel like I could shatter.

“so what if you do?”
whispers the mother
beside me and beyond me.
“light will always poke itself through.”

her gentle words feel as balm
against the skin of my heart.
she holds an armful of sun,
scars from stained glass on her hands,
laughline wrinkles where
the window should hang,

but she wasn’t a game
or a life left for dead.

she was a stained glass story,
with no window to show for it.
and she held all the good things
all the people never say.
she broke and breathed,
stood long, and loved. . .
letting every inch of light
be every part of her.
she was a woman,
not a perfect stained glass
window.

and so I broke.
then shattered.
and breathed.

-S.V.F.