Mother May I.

Her soft lips now chapped.
Calling chants that she blindly reads, but can never quite understand.
She can not live in peace.
She sits uprooted like a willow tree on the water's edge.
Always reaching, her limbs no longer comforting as they once were.
I can not climb these branches.
No.
I've watered her with what love I could.
I laid in her shade and read her stories that Prophets wrote specifically for me.
She listened, but they never soaked into her soil.
I can't get through the surface.
Her bark, thick. Denial.
Dogs down, beg, beg, beg.

I have to walk away, before I fall away.

I watch her crawling so,
She thinks she knows it though.
That he's come for her, but he'll walk passed.
Those who are saved, need be saved last.
I'm choking on your roots.
I can't cut through, I can't cut loose.
As I'm suffocating from your deafening sound.
You no longer speak words for me to hear.
You saw the trembling waves, and showed that coward's face.
What is it that you actually fear?

I have to walk away, before I fall away.

Cast me out then.
Cast me out.
Because he won't.
The soft look in her eyes is no longer there.
Thinning silver layers around the sun, Halo sticking in matted hair.
I know what I know from Living.
I know what I know from Loving.
Have you forgotten all the words now?
Mother, May I be excused.
I know them all by heart.

-Saree McClaran