This Woman called Mother
trigger warning for violent imagery

I am a mother who wants to eat her children. I sit alone in the kitchen. I have cleaned everything in sight.

I have fed my husband. I have fed my children.

I am counting my ribs.

There is little flesh to pinch, to fondle, and I wonder at how

the skin dips into a hollow that is deepening, even

now, as I sit in this kitchen that I clean

come morning, come night. My youngest pulled on my apron. I caught his wrist and

felt the skin. I ran my hands across his

eyes, his nose, his ears, his hands, and

I wondered.

I wondered why there was silence where

the heart should beat.

When he looks at me and I return his steady gaze,

I see distorted reflections of myself -

my eyes, my nose, my ears, my hands, mine, mine, mine, filthy parasites, thieves, draining me of all vitality.

First in the womb, then on the birthing table,

mutilating my body as I sweat and bled to push

out their feeble bodies that now bloat

always wanting, always taking, growing fatter whilst

I become an afterthought in my own home, a shadow against the bare linoleum of the kitchen walls. The floor is cold. The sensation travels through my feet,

up my limbs, into my chest, lodges in my head.

Clarity like white light in the mind. The door opens. As I press the pillow to her face, I am amused

by the way her body spasms, her fingers

clawing at my arms.

Her little nails barely dent the skin.
['Ruth Folorunso']
['Motherhood', 'Thoughts And Feelings', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Violence', 'Writing']