My mother explains the final days
of the big blue blanket I always carried
in the glory days of my very youngest youth.
“It started as a fluffy bouncy blue blanket,” she says,
“And then became a ratty blue tattered blanket,
“and then a holey brown and blue broken blanket
“and then little bit of a knot
“and finally a tiny bundle of rag.”

“And even that,” I ask,
after all these years,
still left with enough fire and venom to fill a sentence,
“was too much for you to allow me to keep?
“I could not hold onto the bundle of rag
just a bit longer?”

“If you look at your home today,”
my mother responds,
“you would see that the bundle of rag would be with you still
“if I let it.”

Of course she is right.
Still, I grumble.

“How did you dispose of it?”
“I told you how it had to be cleaned,”
she sighs, “and it was never seen again.”

“If I ever have children,” I declare,
“They will receive the utmost honesty
from me.”
“Will you ever have children?” I am asked.
“Probably not.” I whisper.
“It may be just as well.
“There are days when they need comfort – more, perhaps, than the truth.”

I wonder if that is truth
or comfort
and decide that I do not want it explained to me.