I miss my sons.
My eldest would have turned 41,
my youngest would have hit 40.
Neither of them would have looked
like their father, or like me.
More divine, but with feet of clay,
angel’s wings not quite white,
but a mother does not look at that.
They would have had to work, drown
in their own sleepless nights,
hold their own women with affection.
Or perhaps not. It does not matter.
I breathed their last breath
with them, tucked them in their
beds of earth, explained how
the bogey man came for them at last
and I could do nothing about it.
They would have understood that.
They knew they came from me.
They gripped my hands as they left.
Their lives were my first death.