Forty Years A Failure

Mommy, mommy, I am through

I no longer have the strength to raise you

You set my life ticking like a thin bronze watch

I end our engagement unable to piece this ugly swatch

Poetry is my choice to show I resign

Nothing like your flawless narrative design

There was an eerie elegance to your numerous sheets

I resort to a series of lines that feel like sharp pleats

_________________

Mommy, mommy, I am through

My sudden block must be a shock to you

No—that wouldn’t make sense

For it would require moving past selfishness

I’m sure after long I’ll receive an infamous note

Crisply folded in a bulging standard envelope

Modern as I am, I offer a digital plea

Presented sleek, black on white and just as neat

_________________

Mommy, mommy, I am through

Clearly, I was never good enough for you

Everything a critique

Even the fact that I breathe

Failure became my middle name

“Not Good Enough” my A.K.A.

The number of insults a statistical anomaly

Festering in a petri dish, the outlier of tragedy

_________________

Intricate family dynamics led to complex lies

Shattered, scattered identities behind masks hide

I managed to feel sorry for you

What on earth have you gone through?

Some of your trauma openly plays on repeat

But, what, I wonder, truly lies beneath

_________________

Forty years of hoped for acclaim

Turned forty years of realized pain

Dying to be feminine, floral

Living instead masculine, brutal

Punched to blackness kissing a hard floor

Slapped and shaken awake to endure more

So, mommy, mommy, I am through

I can no longer take care of you