words like daggers (for my son)

i had hoped to strip
this poem of metaphors
then write about how,
in a kinder world,
one mother buries another
and saves the grip of her sons
for her own casket

i would write it
raw. selfish.
like that

but one of my words
morphed into dagger
and leaped off the page

it may have been raw
could have been selfish
i’m no longer sure

but the word, as if words
know what dagger means
stabbed me just below
what’s left of my heart

the bleeding is slow
so as not to kill me
just slow enough
to get me this far

so,
this is as far as I got