Crashing, Fighting

You're my other mother.

At the top of my family poet tree

you sit, above me,

branches bending beneath us,

groaning about how the blanket sky

never warmed us both at once,

never stopped us both reading

one night when the moon

was cotton wool covered and blind.

Shreds of my identity

compare to you uncannily

and I'm afraid,

I'm afraid that I never met you,

never looked wide eyed up at you

while you intimidated the hell out of me.

You give me a vague urge to free

myself from any room I'm in.

I wanted you to make me

leave the room directly.

Stop moving me.

You're who I aspire to see

and am afraid to see

when I stand at the edge of the sea

looking in, hoping to read the waves

for some hint of futurity.

But I can't endure it like you did;

I too have been spat back out like a cork

and Mother, I'm glad,

because when it all gets too much

and I'm looking into the waves,

feeling nothing but grey,

I pull my hood over my eyes

and retreat silently.

Back to the shelter of the caves,

back to stare at my paper face

in the mirror and seethe,

write all over it in blue-black ink.

Mother I'm afraid I'm real,

too real, I think.