Mother, I am keeping the womb to myself

Mother, i’m absorbing into self element that you taught me to throw up. my flesh, my haven — no one's temple. this life i owe you…. but mother, why can't i stop dying? daughters who lived, die a little everyday. 

i contaminate myself with grief & poetry, whisper to the moon, drink achromatic blood from my eyes. i’m a witch, mother. i carry blood of a rebel. i filled my womb with rage & insanity, mother, did it fit like a glove! i'm but a barren land : for prey or predator, sentenced to death. 

the road to you is a glass pond, mother. i’m walking barefoot near the edges as the footprints hold memories of our genes. a blood lotus is in full bloom in our river of shared sorrow….. i crawled out of that mud once. 

there are things i let die in my womb before they could be birthed. every month i get a letter that says “mother” in colour of the tongue that i borrowed from you at birth. I burn those before the world's misery can shred them in pieces…. don't i do it right, mother? i’m only a daughter and that's a hassle i was meant for. 

but mother, oh mother, who mothers all the mothers? your mother? you, mother? in a world of mothers, a daughter dies every day. will you forgive me, mother? if i let her live, just this lifetime?