MotherFather: A Poem by Travis Reginal

I wake up at 3 in the morning with a pile of work I haven’t touched and deadlines that stand as daunting as skyscrapers and I think about you mother.

I’m reminded of how at the end of each conversation there’s this awkward pause

Where neither one of us can find the strength to say I love you.
It’s not that I don’t, but rather the only way I could express the way I feel

Is if I were to place my beating heart in your palms.

I remember being in the airport at the beginning of my freshman year in college,
Suitcase full of insecurities and doubts,

With a pocket full of literary tricks up my sleeve,
And a penchant for smiling my way through everything.
But that day gratitude didn’t have enough room in my chest.

Nothing could stop the levies in my eyes from breaking.

Tears that resembled waterfalls

Spelled your name on my cheeks and stained my plane tickets.

No, this feeling has to be more than love.

Because words will never be enough

To describe a woman whose laugh is like the first meal in a while for a starving child.

Mom, you don’t give yourself enough credit. You were 15, with a lifetime of dreams

Tucked away in that precious head of yours,

Until some smooth-talking guy

Whispered empty promises,

Took your dreams away as if he was doing you a favor,

And gave you a child as a parting gift.

Dad, if I would’ve known that moment was the closest you would ever be to me and my mother I would have forgiven you at conception.

But little did I know, you had aborted me in your mind.
And little did I know, that no matter how hard I tried or how far I hid myself in another reality as a child,
That eventually you would cross my mind again.

Every time I see another boy playing with his father,

Every time I shave and realize that it shouldn’t take this long,

Too many damn times for my liking and I didn’t have anyone to show me how.

It’s a sad day indeed, when you have to Google search how to be a man.

I tried to make myself visible, make it impossible for you to ignore me

Do whatever it took to make a headline somewhere.

I made sure I’d work to be the top of my class in the hope you’d hear my graduation speech broadcast across TV

Like I even ran track because I heard you were pretty fast in high school

And if I won something, that would give us something in common

Besides our first names.

But mother, I don’t want this to be another sob story.

I want you to remember that we lived every

God-given moment to the fullest with what we had.

We left permanent footprints on shores

Where everything else was washed away.

I don’t see life as a struggle

Just as an opportunity to show what we’re made of.

So let’s take memories past and write them on the face of giants so the world can see.

Mother I will toast to your heartbeat,
That I hear in my dreams at night.
It’s a rhythm of hope and vitality that I never want to stop moving to.

Travis Reginal studies Sociology at Yale University and mentored youth in his home city

We are honored and privileged to share a heartfelt poem. This piece was reprinted by EmpathyEducates with permission or license. We thank, Travis Reginal for his kindness, for his tribute to love, and his parent — an homage to footprints left permanently on the shores.