— TRISTAN WHEELOCK

Happy mother’s day mama.

Wherever you might be...

I wish I got to know you better.

I wonder who I would be if I did.

We never got to have “real” conversations.

Your voice got softened to a murmur before we could.

I remember once upon a time, in a moment when your speech was good enough to hear, you told me the whole thing kind of felt like drifting off to sea while everyone you knew was still standing on the shoreline. I imagine their outlines getting blurred, their words getting harder and harder to hear. But no pain, you’re held in the arms of the Gulf of Mexico when it’s warm like a womb in the middle of the Florida summer.

You loved this weird messed up state so much, the idealized version of it at least. We came here to hide out from the cold when the northern winter’s got too hard for you.

We briefly got to live a version of a dream you had held onto since childhood. You painted our house in Chicago turquoise and pink, and then you painted your cane those same tones when you needed it to walk.

Always creative, a writer a dreamer. I guess those are the parts of you that live in me. I wish I could know for sure. But, I guess very few things in this life are certain, and I’m thankful for the pieces that I do have. Journals, photographs, hordes of strange vintage objects. Sacred fragments that let me know you were real.

Remember when I’d leave with dad for the weekends and you’d say, “see you later alligator” every time?

I do. I got an artist to piece your handwriting together from your journals and now it lives on my left wrist. The hand you favored.