This month would have been my mother’s birthday. Another excerpt from my prison journal: a reflection on the judgment I feared more than the court’s.
MY MOTHER
How she would
defend
me, her Johnny
boy.
But privately
chide
me:
“How could
you?”
Funny I haven’t
thought of
her,
all this time
I’m
here.
Probably
blocked it
out.
No worse
humiliation than
disgrace in your
mother’s eyes.
Those women who
believe
the
unbelievable,
right to the
end.
Though mine,
loving
me forever,
I still would
not escape
her stare,
and its searing
shame.
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