Things I Miss About Living With My Mother

There are things she'll never now know. Not important,
Just the incidentals. Like items of clothing she will never see.
Before, every article clearly kept in the catalogue of her head,
Her inner GPS tracking their movements through the washing cycle.
Who can advise me now to wear this or that, when I'm feeling fat,
and don't feel like leaving the house?

We don't taste the same food now, or fight over tea cups or
Switch on the radio and wait for our favourite song.
She doesn't know the roads that my feet ravage each day.

There are things I miss more than those things, though.
The harder things to pronounce, the larger crosses to bear.
The way she smells. The way that when I steal her scarves
I can still trace the comforting scent. The best smell in the world.
The only olfactory ship that can sail me somewhere safer.
When I sniff her head its because I'm trying to memorise it
Immortalise it like the date of a battle. It scares me how it slips away.
I even miss you cajoling me into rubbing your feet.

Worst of all, best of all, I miss your embrace. I only say embrace
Because cuddles isn't a word for a poem and yet you don't embrace:
You cuddle, with all that that implies. An effervescence of love.
I miss resting my worries and head for a moment upon you.
I miss seeing myself in you and I miss praying that one day
I will be as good as you are.