You are the death force
Going about your business
Destroying the life force
In calm rational ways
Like the scientist in the lab coat
Quietly developing components that kill
Delivering them in small neat little pills
Handing them to loved ones
With the authority bestowed upon her
By others
In a long chain of cultural norms and codes
Of deference and reverence

While I am the effective one
Who gets shit done
With love devotion kindness and gentleness
So fierce
That the sleep-walkers you worship
Perceive me as loud brash aggressive intrusive
Not only not following the script
But rewriting the entire play
And assigning new actors

You hate my power audacity defiance ability
Which demand that you get your little white gloves dirty
With the rich soil of Mother Earth
The howls the wildness the blood of birth

And because your projected image
Which masks your insecurities
Is more important to you
Than Life itself
You resent being associated with me
Sister
Despite the fact
That my very qualities you despise
Are what invoked back to life
The woman who birthed you
Into this world

You say
You have no one
Taking care of you
When in fact
They are running circles
Around you
And that’s how
You do it
Poor me poor me poor me

You come off
Like you’re going to drop dead
At any moment
While you’re actually busy
Strangling the life
Out of your daughter
But nobody can see
Because of
Poor me poor me poor me

You say you have no one
To visit you at the hospital
But your room is too packed
For me to enter
You say there is no one to call
But they have the key to your house
And compete for the rescue
Poor me poor me poor me