I Didn'T Have That As An Option Poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar

Read this at your leisure.
With a doing to comprehend if wished.
You are not obligated to understand...
Once a message comes to me then goes,
How detached I am.

And like a tool to be used,
Nothing about it done did that I do...
Will leave me feeling a need to detail explanations.
Since whatever it was I left to be read,
Sometimes bewilders me as well.

'So...
What are you saying?
Sometimes you don't understand the message?
You own message? '

Trust me,
My own mother use to say and do things to me,
I would ask her 'why' and what she meant.
And she said one day I wouldn't have that need to ask.
And sure enough...
Here it is years later and she was right.

'Oh.
So she was a writer too? '

She wrote.
But she was more of a disciplinarian.
Before the doing of it became outlawed.
And desrespectful children were taught,
To dial 911.
To report the doings done by their parents.

'So...
What is 'your' message? '

Oh no.
You wont get me to beat it into your head.
I did say...
Read it at your leisure.
I didn't have that as an option.