Happy Mother’s Day to My Mother* by Veronica Tucker

Happy Mother’s Day to My Mother*

The asterisk does what I can’t
holds the part I keep stepping around

like a wet tile in a hallway
no one marked

*my mother is dead

and also
she is still the woman who labeled everything
clean block letters on masking tape
drawers, bins, the quiet logic of a house
where nothing was ever misplaced

*my mother is dead

no one will call me today
to ask if I remembered sunscreen
or if the children are wearing enough layers
or if I am sleeping at all

*my mother is dead

and the store is full of cards
printed with soft pink cursive
words that assume a living address

I pick one up
like a pulse I can’t quite find

*my mother is dead

into the space above the sink
where she used to stand
hands in warm water
watching something out the window
I never asked about

into the car she drove
too carefully
both hands at ten and two

into the last voicemail
I cannot bring myself to delete
her voice already thinning
like light through late afternoon blinds

*my mother is dead

and I am a mother now

I look for her in small decisions
how to answer from the other room
when someone calls Mom like it might break
if I don’t come fast enough
how to keep track of who needs what
before they ask
how to say no
and still mean I love you

*my mother is dead

but sometimes
when the house is quiet
between chaos and sleep

I swear
there is a presence
not words
just a steadiness
placed gently in my hands

as if to say
continue

*my mother is dead

I wear her gold bangle every day
the small, constant weight of her
resting against my wrist

and also
everything she touched
is still touching me

even now
even this morning
even as I write her name
inside a card
that has nowhere to go

*

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, mother of three, and lifelong New Englander. Her writing explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, memory, and the human experience. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in ONE ART, The Berlin Literary Review, and Rust & Moth, among others. Her debut chapbook, The House as Witness, is forthcoming in spring 2026. Find her at www.veronicatuckerwrites.com and on Instagram: @veronicatuckerwrites