I never told her.
Nor did she ever ask.
But her eyes... they knew.
In her silence, she screamed everything I was hiding.
Aunt May saw everything.
She saw me when no one else did.
Behind my tired laughs, behind my awkward words,
she saw the boy who came home at night carrying the world on his shoulders... and never spoke a word.
She never called me "Spider-Man,"
but she saw the pain in my walk, the fear in my hands, the guilt stuck in my silence.
She knew—without me saying a thing.
I remember one night I came home shattered.
My chest burning with pain, my body heavy as if I had buried my soul in some dark alley.
I sat down with difficulty on the chair.
I couldn't even breathe.
She brought me a tray with tea.
Placed the cup gently in front of me.
Then she sat down.
And looked at me… that look.
A look that asks no questions, judges no one, doesn't complain.
It just loves you, as you are.
That look...
was worth more than a thousand confessions.
I lied to her every day
"I was at a friend's."
"I fell off my bike."
"My shirt got torn on the way."
And she believed me, or at least... pretended to.
Then, as usual, she whispered
"Just come back safe, Peter."
She put her hand on mine,
and shook her head with a smile that wasn't like any other smile.
She knew.
Everything.
But never exposed me.
She saw the scars that don't show on skin.
Felt the battles not fought with hands.
And patted my back like to say:
"I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."
After Uncle Ben died,
I was the one who broke,
while she...
bore the collapse, standing firm to rebuild the house and life as if she was building a new shelter for me inside her embrace.
One night, I asked her with a broken voice
"Aunt May... do you ever get angry?"
She looked at me with teary eyes and said
"Every day, Peter...
but true love forgives... and it cries."
At that moment, I wanted to lay my head in her lap,
and cry like a little child who forgot what safety feels like.
Aunt May was more than a mother.
She was the only light that never went out,
even when all the lamps inside me were extinguished.
Despite all my lies,
despite all the lives I couldn't save,
she never once asked me "Why?"
She only ever asked
"Did you eat?"
Aunt May never needed a mask to know who I was.
She didn't need a superhero...
She needed her son,
to come back alive, even if broken.
And I did.
I always came back.
Wounded, full of regret,
but I came back.
Because deep inside, I knew...
that every night, she believed in me.
Even when I stopped believing in myself.
And now...
with years passing, she has grown weak, aged,
as if the world has stolen from me my only anchors,
that steady light that guided me through my darkness.
I see her tire more, retreat, silently suffer,
and feel a deep fear of the day I might find myself alone...
without her—the mother my mother never was,
but who was everything to me.
She is my refuge, my heart, my warm voice in this cold world.
And now, I fear this world will take her away,
and leave me drowning in the shadows of my loneliness.
.
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