Note: Not every reunion is a happy ending. (2018)

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The little girl looked down at her untied shoes.

She was only six,

barely knew the alphabet,

and couldn't always remember

her Ps and Qs.

She hung her head lower,

as all her friends' Moms came except hers.

She wondered if she had been forgotten.

"No, Mommy promised," she shook her head.

The mother looked down at her empty bottles.

She was only twenty-two,

and barely moved since getting back

from taking her daughter to daycare.

She can never remember how many she had.

All the bottles rolled on the floor,

clanking together.

"I made a promise," she tried to get up,

but she couldn't.

The little girl's teacher tried to talk to her.

But the little girl said,

"Mommy's coming. She promised."

Being six, she didn't know why her teacher looked so sad.

The mother tried to move again,

and couldn't.

Time ticked by at the same time came that thought—

to leave her daughter at daycare,

and run away.

That idea gave her strength,

and the mother...

* * *

The woman went to see her mother,

for the first time in twenty years

since she was left at the daycare,

stubbornly believing in that promise—

that her mother would come get her.

"Will she come?" the woman wondered,

searching at the street corner.

The mother saw her daughter

searching for her at the street corner.

The mother had been running away from responsibilities

ever since she was younger,

and,

she turned away again.

Too afraid to face the child she left,

too afraid to be ashamed,

and returned to her solitary life,

going against her second promise,

"I'll be there to see you."

The woman looked down at her shoes,

stubbornly waiting for an hour,

knowing she'd been betrayed again.

"I will be a better mother," 

she promised to her future children.

* * *

Years later a young mother

left her daughter,

the same way she was left years ago

by her own mother.