you came out as my mother died

You came out as my mother died -
two separate experiences exhaled
individually into the air that now
equals our lives together.
Maybe it wasn't the same hour,
month, or year, but what we call the past
is not made of separate days, or years,
but exists as a cloud gathering
collectively behind us as we move forward,
a fog touched only by our eyes when we
are dreaming. My mother freed herself
from the chains that bound her as you
escaped into the liberation of adulthood
and fearless identity - I watched her
leave and felt the ache as I grew away but
slowly toward the idea of what
you would become. Perhaps part of
myself was released when she died, the
part that parallels the freedom you
found before I'd even hoped for it.
She left, and maybe in some distant fog
she met your secret self, and nudged
you down your path toward me.
And she felt freedom in the
end of time just as you were plotting
your time's beginning, opening yourself
into a world where soon I would join you,
both of us feeling the pain of separation
and the cleaving, and the gnawing, with
the clouds of our past mingling, colliding,
into the turbulent, passionate storms
and driving rains of our present, that feed
the beautiful nature of our future.

6/15 (edited 7/12)