Today is Children’s Day.
My mother turns eighty-five.
And for the first time this year,
I had breakfast on the balcony.

A day that strokes the soul like tenderness.
The sun—gentle, hidden behind the clouds.
The coffee—bittersweet and fresh, like memory.

Children’s Day – that means you,
you two pirates.
And I think:
Perhaps it means all of us.
Even me—a child still,
while my mother grows old.

And the balcony holds the moment,
a silent witness
to what comes and goes,
and keeps becoming something else.