Somewhere between eggshells and landmines
Were the creaking floors upon which I played
Carefully, for her wrath could be detonated
At a footfall, just a bit too heavy
From a word uttered under the breath
A mess left too long in the sink.

But her embrace was warm,
Wrapping around me like sheets from the dryer
And when she put on pause her own life
To tend to me at my sick-bed,
Her eyes showed only tender love.
“My baby goat,” she would say, affectionately,
And leave a kiss upon my feverish brow.

She is a living contradiction, my mother:
Churning disapproval shattering the gleam
That she put into the hopeful eyes of a child
Just a moment before.
I lived in perpetual uncertainty,
Never knowing which mother I might see next:
The raven or the hen.

And now she looks at me with disappointment,
Wondering aloud why her children fear her.
Her capriciousness eroded away any trust
And much of the fondness as well
Her hot-blooded adoration
And her ice-cold tantrums
Have mixed so long now
All that is left is
Lukewarm like the bathwater
Left over from when the
Baby was thrown out.