lifetimes later i get seasick

i can't swim
because i am afraid of
drowning in deep water

in a past life
i lost my husband to the sea
i had to raise my daughter
who in this life is my mother

i ran a boarding house
i cooked
 i cleaned
my mother/daughter
was traumatized
after from the death
of her father

she watched him drown
in the waves
when all i could think about
was now that the captain
had drowned
that the remaining seamen
would rape me and my daughter

lifetimes later

i get sea sick
my mother
is still my daughter
and my daughter
comes from another place

a star in the distance
i glimpsed
in the in between

while she longs to shine bright
 i peruse the darkness
looking for answers

she wants to connect
she is the star
in a constellation

she can not shine 
without my darkness
but she doesn't understand
how i lost my light

i swallow the nothing
so she can see 
she is something

it hurts my soul to remember
when i was like her
when i believed in a meaning
when i believed that people 
were good

we orbit one another
in this vast space

i  am drawn to the past

that other life
when smiles were pennies found
heads up on the sidewalk

when lemonade stands
were on every corner
in the summer