Dame Wilburn

for years.

She said, what do you want to do next?

And I said, I want to finish.

And we walked over to the business office, and she wrote a check.

And we walked outside, and that's when the sun hit her.

And she pulled up to her full height, and you could hear the leathery edges of her wings snapping in the wind.

And she unclenched her talons and put one right up against my jugular.

And she said, you need to get the hell out of this school because I'm not paying one more dime for your education.

And I thanked her.

And she drove off.

But I didn't need her pep talk.

I already knew what I wanted to do.

And I walked off that campus with the highest GPA of my entire educational career, a 3.0.

And my own set of leather wings.

Thank you.

She does.

And the reason I paint her as fierce, and my mother passed away in 2007, and she was home, so I was with her when she passed.

And...

some of the last coherent things that she said to me was that I would tell people that she was a bad mother.

And I said to her, you weren't a bad mother.