my mother- her face ages

from cigarettes and smiles

middle-life women call them laugh lines

in bitter humor

on their eleventh anniversary of their twenty-ninth birthday

and with age, comes tears

a sort of sopping heaviness,

leaking out like a dirty mop over the edges of youth

filling the cracks that the smiles made-

ruining the edges of the pictures

each year, another pound for the heart to carry

in a life anchor

no wonder she looks so tired.

she’s tied like a ship by the years,

slowly sinking,

bated her breaths