Healing
My mother can’t see me
when I walk into the PT room,
she doesn’t know what color
skirt I have on, or that the extensions
I’m wearing aren’t my real hair,
but it doesn’t matter
her sight she’s traded for the body’s
other possibilities – touch, feel
smell, so when
I reach her and say,
it’s me, Sandra, I lift her
hands to my long African beads
a Reiki friend once told me
are supposed to heal the body,
and my mother – who hasn’t been able
to see me for years – feels my body
in front of hers, bows her head
and rubs these small brown beads
over and over again in her hands
© Sandra Evans Falconer
Sandra Evans Falconer is an award-winning writer, poet, and recipient of an Individual Artist Award in poetry from The Maryland State Arts Council. She is also the author of two chapbooks, and a full length collection, The Six O’clock Siren. Sandra was one of the founding members of the long running Saltimbanquers Literary Salon in Baltimore, MD. She now lives in nearby Washington, DC where she works as a writing coach and expressive arts therapist.
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