Spelling Things Out

It was a liberating Scrabble game;
she loved me, this woman who was my mother
yet not my mother,

soothing her burdened heart with a sip of gimlet
she confesses I cannot believe my son
does not want his little piece of the sod,

and as she places the tiles for ABSOLVE
on the triple word score, for 45 points,
her surprising instructions set me free,

If you find someone
who makes you happier than my son,
go with him.

*

Elaine Sorrentino is Communications Director at South Shore Conservatory in Hingham, MA. Her work has been published in Minerva Rising, Willawaw Journal, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Ekphrastic Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Global Poemic, The Writers’ Magazine, Haiku Universe, Failed Haiku, and has won the monthly poetry challenge at wildamorris.blogspot.com.