A Haiku For Mom

Along with 732 other people, I entered a haiku in a mother's day contest. It had to be about my mother. I mean, the other 732 people didn't write about my mom, they wrote about their own. Right? Cuz that would be weird if they were writing about some woman they'd never met before. The winning haiku writer gets 1,000 dollars. Mine didn't make the top five. I certainly wasn't expecting it to. But, Mom, here is the poem I wrote for you. For those of you who may not know, a standard haiku has five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.

Here's to the times you
Held my hair out of the puke
And lifted my dreams

Maybe because it has the word "puke" in it people don't want to give it 1000 dollars or any real critical acclaim. But the only other one syllable word I could come up with for vomit was barf and it didn't flow as well. I suppose spew could have worked. It should be stated that whenever there was actual hair holding, 75% of the time it was my dad. But in that particular line, puke is actually a metaphor for all the times she picked up the pieces or managed to keep me out of life's gunk. It should also be noted that I ralphed a whole lot as a child. It wasn't until Garrett and the Great Vomiting Evacuation Excursion that I truly appreciated the enormity of the sacrifice my parents had made concerning my own volumes of upchucked stomach contents. Anyway, it's hard to say just how much my mom means to me in seventeen syllables.

Here are the haikus that took the top five spots.

By Darcie at Such the Spot:
You have taught me that
because of a mother's love
I will never crack


By Anne Glamore at Tiny Kingdom:
You've been gone two years.
Your ghost disses my red hair:
"You look better blonde!"


By Chelsea at Crafty Cassie:
I always thought Mom
was bipolar til I had
children of my own.


By P.A.:
Mom, my heartmother
Not of your womb, but filled with
Your life's legacy.

By Veronica at Toddled Dredge:
"Girls can't play ball," they
told her once. Her grand-daughter
pitches and she smiles.

If you'd like to award one of these 1000 dollars, head over here and vote. But, let me ask you one question before you vote for the last one (if you were planning to vote for the last one). Isn't smiles two syllables? I mean, I pronounce it smy-uls. Do people really say smyuls in just one syllable?