Strange Poems

The Jacket

On my 13th birthday I was expecting a phone.
A small machine I had been longing for years.
All my peers had been granted with one months before I had even thought about it.
So when I turned 13 I knew
that I had to be responsible enough
for one, I just had to be.
So when I received my mother's army green jacket as a present
I threw it at a wall.
I yelled
"Dad would have gotten me a phone!"

I never knew what the jacket had really meant to my mother.
All I knew was that it wasn't the cell phone I had wanted.
I didn't know that we couldn't afford a cell phone for my mother,
let alone me.
I didn't know that she had given up her wedding ring to try
and afford it,
but she will had come up short.
I didn't know that two years later,
on my fifteenth birthday she would give her final breath.
I didn't know she would die crying because she couldn't get me present,
do to the fact all of our money was going to her cancer treatment.
I didn't know that I would lose my mother at such a young age.

And I still don't know why her army green jacket meant to much to her.
All I know is that she loved it enough to give it to me.
And now I wear it as much as I can because no,
its not a cell phone,
it is not expensive,
but I wouldn't give it up for the stars.
I love you mom.