This Mother’s Day,
I gave my mother
a purse,
her favourite colour,
olive green
hip
eco-friendly
expensive.
She liked it,
I think.
She hugged me
and said it
was perfect.
But I wonder if
she was thinking
of the other purse,
a Mother’s Day
thirty years ago,
made of paper
and inside
a paper comb
carefully cut with scissors,
a paper lipstick
red with crayon wax,
a paper wallet
filled with paper money,
all thousand dollar bills,
even paper pens
made of rolled up paper
taped together into long tubes
that didn’t look like pens
at all.
For months afterwards,
every morning
I would hand her
the paper purse
as she left for work,
her pockets hiding
the bare essentials:
keys
credit card
a real lipstick.
And each morning
she would hug me,
thank me,
and tell me
it was perfect.