Written March 4 2020
What Makes a Family
By: Kimmy Higginbotham
I used to have a window in my bedroom
I fell asleep to slatted lines of Christmas lights on your chest.
The window is now a shadowbox shelf you built for me.
No more cold sneaking in to make us pull closer to each other
No more sunny mornings trying to coax us from our sheets
No more watching the moonlight play shadows across your sleeping face.
But then you're no longer there either.
Nor am I.
There are someone else's children on the other side of that wall.
My family, but a family all their own.
They tap messages through the shadowbox shelf you built for me.
They don't know the life we had there.
They won't remember the window.
The are making their own memories in that house - in those rooms - behind the door you hung.
My house has changed, but it's still my house.
My room has changed but it's still my room.
My family has changed but they're still my family.
And even though you've gone, so are you.