I rather eat my heart.
Make a dissection between the vena cava
Blood thick and fresh against the tongue.
If guilt were to have a flavour
I believe it should taste like copper.

You hadn’t meant it that way
But all my life you fed me guilt.
Milk white in its youth; the colour of rust
As the years pass.
We have the same eyes.

The same excruciating pain.
Except you call yours necessary. And
You are synonymous with it. This is what
Being a mother is. From birth to death
Sacrifice. Suffering. Solitude.

|That is what it takes, you say, for Heaven
To be under a mother’s foot.
You wear this pain with pride. Reduced yourself!
And still, you ask
Why is motherhood so lonely?

Mother! Why is daughterhood so guilty?
The mirror shows suffering, not
A reflection. So what can a daughter give
To relieve this much hurt? A lifetime of guilt
The desire to eat her heart.