Nelly Boustany

Mom,

You raised a dreamer in a valley that sometimes forgot to dream. You did it without a manual, without certainty, and without ever letting me see the weight of it. That is the bravest thing I have ever witnessed, and I watched it happen every single day.

I have written poems about the moon. About silence. About the eclipse and what it means to disappear into your own darkness and come back. I have written about everything that hurts and everything that aches and everything in between. But I have never written a poem about you, because I don't know how to hold you in a metaphor without breaking something. You are not a symbol. You are the ground. You are the reason anything I've ever built had something to stand on.

Every morning you made ordinary, I was already somewhere else in my head, already reaching for something far away. You never pulled me back. You just made sure I was fed, and rested, and loved, so that when I ran, I ran from a full place.

I don't think you know how much that is. I don't think any child knows until they're old enough to look back and realize the running was only possible because someone was holding the rope.

You held the rope, Mama. Through everything.

If I have ever been brave, it is because I learned bravery from watching you be tired and still gentle. From watching you carry things I couldn't see and still show up soft. That kind of strength does not announce itself. It just holds. You held.

I love you in a way I don't have a poem for yet. One day I will find the words. Until then, know that nothing I ever build, no degree, no company, no book, no dream, will mean more to me than what you built in me before I even knew it was happening.

Thank you for being my mother. Thank you for being mine.

Your son, always,

Elia