You use your son
As a shield and a weapon
To get what you want
And get out of what you don’t want
Eschewing responsibility
Leveraging the patriarchy
To assemble a protective layer around you
Hiding your violence
Under the guise of motherhood
When you abandoned your own mother
To create your hi-tech child
Whose test tube incarnation
May have led to the autism
That you now beat your chest about
So that everyone sees you as a victim
And a hero
You cry out
The song of martyr
But it just might be poetic justice
That you’ll now be a caregiver
For the rest of your living days

©2019 by Loolwa Khazzoom. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be copied without author’s permission.

There are three kinds of people
The ones who look out for you
Who are aware alert
Who initiate offer help love support
Without your having to ask
Who are the ones who ask you
What you need
And what they can do
Who will go all out
Make personal sacrifices for you
While seeing that as a privilege an honor
Not a sacrifice

Then there are those
Who will be there for you
When you ask
If it’s convenient
Stretching maybe a little bit
But not outside their comfort zone
Even if your life is on the line
Especially if you don’t spell out
That it is

And there are those
Who will abjectly fail you
Maybe even point a finger when they do
Accusing and punishing you
For inconveniencing annoying burdening them
Simply for having a need
And expressing it
Implicitly or explicitly
Asking them to step up
To care enough
To do something

There are variables within
The ones who will rise to the occasion
For a family member or close friend
But not a stranger
And the ones who will do anything for anyone
Because they can
Because they care
Because there is no such thing
As a stranger

How the fuck are we supposed to live together
When these disparate values variables
Are all floating around in the mix
To different degrees
Unclear at the outset
Who is what and when
And when we are operating from
Radically different paradigms constructs
Of life itself

I’ve […]

You are passive in the extreme
To the point that on some level
I have no idea who you are
And I wonder if you do
Negating yourself
As you negate me
By failing repeatedly
To act
To step outside your comfort zone
n behalf of this relationship
Which you claim
Is important to you
Expecting me
To play the role of
Your auxiliary
Unwilling to do anything
Anything that inconveniences
The solitary and fear-driven life
that you have created
And that you reinforce
Through your choices
While claiming
You want something else
Something better

I feel disregarded disrespected dismissed
Repeatedly
And I cannot help but wonder
If your mother felt like that with your ather
To the point
That she nearly
Self-immolated
A physical symbol
Of her non-existence in your family

Is that what it takes
To get your attention
To inspire you to take action
To notice
That I do not exist
In your considerations
As you make one executive decision after another
At best announcing it to me
As a fait accomplish
But more often than not
Simply saying nothing

Your implicit lack of regard
For your word my feelings this relationship
Is in its passivity
A form of dominance
Emotional violence
Everything revolving around you
As I wait patiently
For you to come through
Which doesn’t happen
Because when I stop initiating
Process therapy heart-felt discussions
When I stop driving this relationship
The car just stops

©2018 by Loolwa Khazzoom. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be copied without author’s […]