The Blue Room

Only the bedspread is blue, 
a bedroom where bay windows 
are a lens into life inside a forest.
 
It is not the sunny vista discussed 
every morning she awakened 
to my presence, but in this room 
 
every morning, I feel her presence
and am anything but blue. 
“Hello, my mum.” 
 
I am smiling, voice soft, arms wide,
familiar gestures a gateway 
into a new day but without
 
her smile, her embrace, her response, 
“Hello, my Mary.”
She is not here for me to rub her toes 
 
or kiss her cheek and yet, 
in this three-dimensional scrapbook 
of family I call the blue room,
 
I remember
and repeat the rituals we created 
to shape our heaven on earth.