Mother,
I see you.
I feel a heaviness.

Your smile hides
a deep story of
pain,
regret,
sadness,
and uncertainty.

I feel
the fear you feel,
even though you speak of it
as though you know it were truth.

You tell me
and teach me
what I need to be
but in yourself
I hear a different message.

You try so hard
and I know that you are tired.
I blame myself
for your shouldered burdens
and why you aren’t being
who I see deep down inside.

Father,
you’ve acted so strong.
You pretend to be a superman
but I know
that you are broken inside.
You are a great actor.

I’ve been told
that a man should be
strong and impermeable,
but I want to cry,
I want to get angry,
I want to run away
from all that I’ve been told to be.

I’ve been told
that a woman should be
submissive and vulnerable,
but I want to speak out,
I want to be bold,
I want to be sexy and strong.

I am not mother.
I am not father.
I am not any conditioning.

Yet I don’t know who,
or what
I am.

All around me I see
faces,
masks really,
for I see through them.

Where is truth?
What is real?

I don’t feel
as though I belong here.
I wonder if anybody does?

How do I go along in life?
No map.
No compass.
Nothing real
to hold onto,
except the subtle spark
residing in my soul.

A little nudge
that leads me on.
Forward
day by day.

It’s nothing
I can identify
to any religion.
It’s nothing definable at all.

It is.
And I’ve felt it
and known it
but this is unlike anything
I’ve been taught
or have witnessed
in the world.

This is personal.
This is individual.
This is understandable
and perceptible
only to me.

It is my own world.
And in this world I create.
In this world I destroy.
In this world
I die and become reborn
again
and again
and again.