Ma, Matha

Your eyes have always been your truth-tellers.

You never really had much of a poker face.

Your brows furrow or your eyes light up or your lips part as if to say something.

Your eyes always echoed our pain or celebrated our joy.

Sometimes you try to hold a blank look when you’re mad and don’t want to talk to us

Unintentionally showing us how empty our lives would be without your voice to carry us through it.

Your eyes always tell us how you really feel about what we’re doing.

How our decisions made you feel.

Whether we stayed out too late, weren’t eating right or in recent years, just carried too much of the world’s issues on our backs.

If only we’d have paid more attention to your eyes and the thoughts and stories they revealed, that often went unsaid.

Your eyes told us whether you were proud of us, excited for us or if you were disappointed in our actions.

Back then, the latter sometimes felt like a guilt trip, the magical decisive power of a mother’s grimace.

Now it feels like openness, a way to probe further and get feelings in the open.

Even now, as I look at you, your eyes somehow radiate with both hope but also worry.

Hope that we’ll get life right, worry that we won’t.

The lines that cushion your eyes have always been soft, forever showing off your worldly experience and years of silent struggles and successes

But in the most humble of ways.

They also carry your laughter, far after the jokes and smiles have faded.

Giving laughter its well-deserved encore

And keeping the warmth within us lasting longer than we realize we needed.

I love you never felt like strong enough words

Or sufficient enough language to capture how strongly I felt about you

And the many ways you’ve impacted how all of us have grown.

They were also words rarely uttered by our family

Seen as too soft or fluffy to capture the struggles or obstacles you overcame to get us to where we are.

But maybe our eyes have been saying these sweet somethings to each other all these years

Assuring us that amidst the laughter or arguments, our eyes always conveyed love.

Inspired by Rupi Kaur’s writing workshop - write a letter to your mom, using a series of body parts as a vehicle to express yourself.