Journey into womanhood
Mother, why didn’t you tell me?
Mother, look at me,
You never told me.
You dressed me up in fresh petal dresses,
gleaming with a desperate whiteness,
powdered, dusted with fairy tale illusions.
Even the moon became envious,
as scabrous veins bleached in his conceit,
weighted upon the frigid tree.
Bent from a lifetime of shrieking,
shrivelled, burdened by his arrogance,
she was the pedestal to his high standing.
He never thanked her. But, mother,
you said, “That’s how it is,
that’s the way it’s meant to be, for two shadows to touch
and for one to lose itself inside of the other.”
It was always her shadow that she would have to sacrifice,
always her being, lost in him, that would deserve his title.
Strange that she is a body with a soul,
no different from him.
She has a title, a name, her father’s name,
yet she is rendered childish
because she hides beneath her blanket.
She is scared but understands that her soul is a garment,
longing to protect her fragile frame,
dressing it with shame and reason.
Mother, you never told me
that womanhood is a journey into the soul.
I have come to think that I may never become,
so I continue travelling, fighting to find this foreign body,
hoping to resurrect and breathe new life into her?
