Mummy Issues
My mother Mary, my mother Lily.
Your delusions of purity rot into judgment.
Death awaits me upon acquaintance in this world.
A voice built to mirror love becomes my incessant, hostile critic.
Safety is shown through conditions
Care is tied to virtue; praise feels suspicious.
Even when she is not there, her judgment lives inside me.
She makes me her biggest competition,
her biggest lesson.

Remember,
she tells me
affection can be withdrawn at any moment.
So we rehearse it over and over.

When she sees me, she sees herself,
a reflection of her own shame and loss.
This world has treated you unkind, my dear.
One more dream left undone. You see me and only see your compromises,
the pain that results from unsatisfied craving, passed down as inheritance.
A lust for life never allowed to be indulged.

She is yet to learn love through integration,
transactional in nature

a mother’s conditional love.