giants

thought it would be a cool idea
to draw her
asleep
in her bed
after the stroke

this soon turned into --
an unflattering portrait of my mother

but I finished it
before throwing it out,
the wispy, white and charcoal gray hair
the narrow Jewish nose
with the long nostrils
drawn in red ink,
the only kind of pen
the nurse had

and what I found here
were memories --
of the things we had done
the way she had cared for me
how we had played our game
together

all that time,
never realizing
we are actually giants,
asleep,
dreaming ourselves
to be mother and son