My Whole Universe

No one asked me if you could leave

or if I ever needed you.

Control is an illusion.

I learn this; I am young.

Your absence is an animal

of subtraction and frenzy

locked in a cage while

people point and stare.

Will she fall in the bottle?

He does not raise her,

Not enough room in a brown bottle

for more than one.

But I rise like the sun

even if blurred by clouds

of self-doubt and despair,

and sometimes I am the moon

reflecting my own bright light.

My family,

they are my earth, my world

and collectively, my sun.

Our gravities push and pull.

We are globes of light and warmth

sustaining life against all odds.