Not Mom

I pretend not to hear her
when she slips, calling me
Mom. I don’t want to be hurt
when she takes it back. Words
fall, cascading in nursery rhyme
ease from her seven-year-old lips.
She sits on my lap waiting for
the song I sing to her, one my own
mother sang to me. She falls asleep,
easily safe from the world. Mom
or not, I feel she is a part of me.