I wasn't nice to my mother
My mother was a lonely woman
Daughter of a farmer
who I think I heard
Used to touch kids
Wife of many
Who beat her
Spat on her face and
Tore her soul off her
And she was a mother to me 

Sometime just before
my teens
She made me
a sandwich
to take to school
With a little
too much
Mustard in it

I took a bite
during my lunch break
And the sharp and sickening
tang
of the mustard
Made me sick

I took the sandwich
back home
And shouted at her
Asking why
she would put
so much mustard
in my sandwich

"Is it not nice? I thought you'd like it"
she said
"I like mustard
here
I'll eat it"

I had never seen
someone look so heart broken
Eating what they like

She was dressed in mustard,
on a tall golden chair
She sat before clean,
crisp and clear silverware
around her, nothing mattered
not even the polluted air
she left, nobody noticed
they ask "was she even there"

-Kaya

Once in awhile
I feel inclined
To stay up all night
Writing stanzas like this.

And having drunk three
Shimmering tumblerfulls of
Self-doubting coffee
The prospect seems alive.

The longer I stay
Awake
The sooner I can
Reinvent myself.

My body is
Changing
And so is my
Soul.

And I'm beginning to see
Where I went wrong
In this world where I
Raised myself to be right.

However, if I stay awake
One cannot forget the issue of
Filled notebooks, attractive men
And tomorrow's frosted gaze.

Perhaps I will shower in
Whole-grain mustard at three a.m.

Everything is made up of the tiniest particles and if you think about it,
we're not that big compared to a lot of things out there in the universe and
I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel everything crashing down on top of me,
I feel the weight of being such a tiny speck in such a great big world closing in around me and straining my very bones and when you get to the point of lying lifeless on your bedroom floor or screaming and cursing at the moon with every breath stored up in your little lungs, you start to think you could never feel much worse but I'll tell you something: there is something small but great
inside your very core and just a little Faith, it doesn't have to be any bigger than a mustard seed,
well that can go a long way and if you look hard enough, if you really try,
Darling find that God Atom inside of you; I promise you'll get by.

There's so much about the way leaves look.
Under light.
Wet with rain.
I seize up.
Memories.
Of service.
Rush into.
My safe space.
For all I've hardened is just a front.

Creaming leaves, dripping
off her spiderweb branches
as we eat dinner under the mustard sun,
I feel her nervous as I eat slowly, she glances
at my spiderweb branches and grabs my web.
She spins her prey in my web and moves it slowly
down, among her roots, where I feel gnarled and leafless.
My autumn colors have vanished in her winter
frozen stems, frozen in time, I stare into her
mustard reflected eyes.

Between her and our
Almighty Beloved,
this mustard seed faith
grows as the willow.