Monsters And Poetry

Why should we not be using each other

In this mad world

Filled with pain and loss

Hunger, death, depravity?

This world is so filled with evil

Sometimes all you can do

Is reach for each other,

Lose yourself in someone else

Pretend, for a moment,

That your pain does not exist,

That you see forever in their eyes,

And that the world does not burn behind you

As your sweat-soaked bodies are silhouetted

To be quiet when they say

“You don’t know what it’s like,”

To nod in agreement when they say,

“But you’re not really a mom,”

To step in, but only in the background

To quietly right the wrong

And never speak it aloud

To endure the million lies

The horrors, in silence,

Anything to keep the others safe

“You’re responsible for helping,”

They say

“Helping raise good humans in this world,”

But how do you do that

When you don’t know what it means

To be a human at all yet

To be made into the paper tiger

“You must never raise your hand

Your voice, in anger, only we,”

But they never will

Unless it’s to you

While the laughter echoes around your ringing ears

To pace up and down floors

With a screaming child

And that child still screams 16 years later

Except she’s screaming that she despises you now

And the lies flood the room again

And as the floods push you away yet again

You say, “I have never been a mother