Shorthand Laughter

My mother laughs in shorthand,

She broadens her cheeks;

Big enough to accommodate her worries and mine,

She’s always a mouthful of rhetorical questions

With a laugher so beautiful,

So much it freezes time whenever she tries to

It looks like for once the world became a safe place to live in

Seconded to her heaven of a womb

My mother laughs in shorthand,

And too bad I don’t know shorthand

For my teacher is yet to teach me that,

But I know the day I do interpret her encoded laughter,

I will see chuckling questions of

What is he going to eat?

Does he miss me when I’m absent?

Will the world ever give him the good he deserves?

photocredit- lexonart