Stolen Right of Passage

 

The thing that cuts deepest

About my mama’s passing

Is not just the silence she left behind

It’s the doorway I never got to walk through

The season where a mother

Finally grows into one of her daughter’s little friends

You know the right of passage

When the apron drops

And the talk stretch long

And you hear her laugh different

Because now she sees you woman to woman

I never got that

No late night phone calls

Where she would whisper wisdom wrapped in gossip

No, “Come ride with me” trips

Where the world softens

Because you are sitting next to the woman

Who shaped your spine

Death stole that chapter

Before I could even turn the page

And sometimes that loss hits me harder

Than the day she left

Because I didn’t just lose my mother

I lost the friend she was becoming

The friend I never got to be