Sunshine Poem by Jon Edward Walker

my mother used to sing to me:
“sunshine,
you are my sunshine,
you make me happy
when skies are grey
you never know dear,
how much I love you,
please don’t take my sunshine away.”
I believed her.
twice when I was
a child
she checked herself into
a mental institution.
depressed and suicidal.
When I was twelve
I found a picture she had
painted and hidden of an
arm limp, palm up
with wrist open and bleeding.
I re-hid the picture,
and went back
trying to be
her sunshine