Mom’s Bottles

Mom kept the bottles—empty and bare—
Of wine she'd drunk in deep despair.
She stacked them neatly in the room,
One beside one, in quiet gloom,
Believing one day, when skies were clear,
She’d turn them into something dear.

When storms within her heart grew small,
And life began to feel less cruel,
She dusted off each glass with care,
Took out her paints, her sunlit tools.
She wrapped them gently up in twine,
She gave each bottle love and time.

With every stroke, her brush would glide,
As if to hug the pain inside.
She colored them with patient grace,
And let old grief slip from its place—
As if she closed a haunted page,
Or bowed farewell to silent rage.

And now, with years gone by, I see
The grace her sorrow gave to me.
Those lovely crafts, those glass displays,
Tell how her light found gentle ways
To bloom from shadows, dark and deep—
Where even joy had ceased to sleep.

Now dozens of homes softly gleam
With fragments of her shattered dream.
A piece of her, reborn, remains—
A heart once drowned, now healed of chains.
Her soul lives on in painted glass—
The truest form of art, at last.