A terrible Mothers’ Day poem

In the weeks building up to this fake

Because I can’t feel it

Day

Mother’s Day

I get twitchy.

I am not a mother

from a birth canal trip point of view.

My motherhood was stopped in its tracks

by a bad romance bad choice bad guy decision

And some breeze way furniture that my own mother

really needed at the time.

In the weeks coming up to the first weekend in May

With pink hearts and soft flannel advertising

I get itchy and scratchy and mean.

And the longing and loneliness I feel

Is not for the children I never had to call me mom,

But for my own mother

to own me as her now grown child.

And people will call me spiteful, and wilful and cruel.

The woman who lives, and is lonely and sad

Is my mother. Surely a kindness from me will soften everything

And make things rosy?

But, the Mothers’ Day restaurant offers, and special spa deals, and discount body cream sets, and floral printed soup mugs, and twenty roses delivered, and lacy underwear, and fluffy warm slippers, and tanzanite jewels (last year’s fashion on sale), and friendship rings and Lindt chocolates in re-purposed Valentine’s Day hearts

Make me sick.