Popping

In 2018 I saw my Mother,
hair gummidged and greased,
body deflated,
glass confined
whilst consulting with the nurse,
stomach in throat,
throat all abandoned.
I'd been so sure,
decided I was fully grown,
well rooted
yet there
face to face with wires, machines,
dancing about her body
as delapidated mansion Virginia,
I was seven,
her turtledove hands
in my hands,
her mouth painting pictures,
he'd inched
into her sanctuary,
made soot
where there'd been snow,
and you know,
monsters are made,
rather than born.
I stood, no more than her child,
she laid, no more than trapped
in the version of a Mother
she had no intentions of being,
eyes scattered as deers
before truck '99,
if that isn't love,
if wanting to bundle her up
as if she came from my womb
rather than I from hers,
if staying despite colostrum
swelling in the mounds of me,
if staying despite knowing
there's nothing that can be done
to fix poison pumping
in the rivers of us,
isn't love,
well,
I've always been rather
nonplussed.