“My mother would kill me if she got the chance. I would kill my mother if I had the courage.” Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
What about giving birth
left you wearing envy like
a second skin, too tight to move
around in? Were her cries too
suffocating for you to exist in & so
you been hitting back, fighting
ever since you first held her
in your arms and heard her cry
knowing sometimes you would not
be the one who could stop her tears
Empty insults & closed fists are
not God’s gift and should not have
been yours either. How can you not see
how she cowers underneath the blistering
rays of your hate? Why are you trying to
teach her to hate herself while despising
that very hate? You force her to stand in
your shadow, cowering, crying, trying to hold
herself together and you hate her for always
falling apart.
Will you always teach her to ignore the sun &
force her into the night? As if though you haven’t
always belonged to the night, as if though
you have not spent an eternity trying to part the folds
of night and escape. You know the horror of
being enveloped in dark clouds that descend
like a mist, slowly overtaking you until
there is no you left. Did you just not want to be
left alone in the night? Is that why you chose to
keep her lost in the night? Is that
why?
Peace & Love,
Rosalind
A Writer's Thoughts 