What Holds Her Back?
What holds her back
is damned to be back-burned
and, God willing, will be
thoroughly ash by the time
her daughter outgrows
the artifice of “content” and learns
Mother has been tangled to a
caravan with no rope,
hitched and switched,
back faced to debt notes
at full gallop.
Her usual hayride
is a static ballot of
loose limbs and listless feet
or an unfaithful jump
to jolt the knees.
She stiffens as she wakes
to the road between,
back-casting
in dust and stories:
“Mom, I’m living my dreams”.
But the backfire
is unforeseen.
It’s slow coping from
the dear voice of
a daughter’s new daring
and a spirit she tried to choke
years ago, both in spark –
the pain’s still flaring.
She cannot lighten her eyes.
The wagonload weighs
too much like scarecrows
hankering after permanent stakes,
likely to burn:
“Come with me?”
Mother chose a purgatory
that singes any innocence from her
mistakes and takes to the scald
of fault, condemned to be
distraught by the reconciled.
“Child, quiet now.
You go.”
Her usual hayride hauls
ramshackle and shamed.
It deals in wheels of
dependency.
She averts her eyes
after a frail smile goes up in smoke
of scarecrows laughing at the back,
where I can see.
“Don’t do the things I did. Please,
live your dreams. Little sunflower,
do it for me”,
she whispers as she chokes.
My tears breathe deep in the chest,
behind a resolution to bring her hope,
God willing,
let light kiss her
where what holds her back
stokes the most.