Je Me Souviens... Poem by Richard John

I remember all the ills of my youth
All the pain and iniquity that congested in my life;
A voided vessel whose limits were boundless and never to fill.
I always puzzled over what I had done to evoke your frigidity
Had your soul evacuated its infernal bastille
What could have caused such hatred to drown a heart,
To spill over into hands that sought to tear my existence apart?

I remember never loving you
As most other children, their mothers, do
Even as your heavy heart and fists lightened with age
Or as your vision darkened to obscurity, your words always found their target
My heart, for whose damage you could never be exonerated
Yet, you never faltered to remind me how I came to be in this world
And how easily, you threatened, you could reverse that process.

The irony is uncanny: I remember never blaming you
For the misery you made to define my life
And which still persists to refine and defile me
But I learnt why you never said "I love you, dear son of mine"
Or threw me skyward to catch and embrace me as I fell to earth
Or rocked me to sleep. One kiss would've made me not feel so alone
Why? Because like me you weren't mothered let alone owned


And now as I pen this script
Thought up as an epitaph to compliment your grave
My emotions, quiescent, rest entombed like bones in my earthly soul
As I can never hope to love you despite my longing to
Only my pity can I truly offer you
For like me, when you had begged for love, you were fed with strife
You had no one to hold you and say "You are the light in my life"

To mother
With Pity I remember you