My precious Baby
My wonderful child
My headstrong teenager
Gone radically wild.

My breathtaking grownup
My source of delight
My hope that tomorrow
Makes everything right.

The decades have trebled
My efforts have failed
My key cannot open
The place where I’m jailed.

She’s made me a stranger
To the life she’s created
She claims that she loves me
But I sorely debate it.

She married in secret
I’ve not met her groom
I don’t think we’ll ever
Be in the same room

She says I am toxic
All know I am not
Her shrink is the villain
And ought to be shot.

I live on the outside
And only look in
On the life I created-
A game I won’t win.

I’ll swallow my heartbreak
As I’ve always done.
Still reach for redemption
And settle for none.
ljm

the wind is blowing
but the world is still
when you laugh
the hurt in my heart
grows flowers in the cracks
I can feel you try to mend me
as I re-write the memories
but it is your sweet nectar
that keeps sticking to me
as I endlessly try to
wash myself clean
of all I was tied to

and I look back at those places
that once felt like safe spaces
and I feel weak in the knees
for not being brave enough
to open my eyes and see
that you never were
what you promised you'd be
I had made up this story
told it so well

and dressed it up in me

and now that you're gone
I spend my nights
un.dressing the ache
of the never-ending
echo of the child
I never got to name

yet for you,
it's nothing more than a story
an "almost, what-if, thank-goodness"
kinda thing

and that is why
it is always the mother
who carries the weight
who has to bleed

a power I have embodied the best
ever since you decided to leave

We reach a point where
all our night and daydreams
revolve around the things
we did rather than the things
we want to do, featuring the
person we used to be.

A remembered scrapbook of
Life already lived rather than
anticipated. An exercise in
Self-Absolution perhaps
sometimes dreamed in color.