Spineless Nothing

You stare at me,
eyes of need,
and I bend
longing to meet your
brittle limbs, to pick up
your small brown body,
feed it,
cloth it,
love it until it breaks
me.

You stare at me,
seeing only the food I bring,
the shirt I clean,
never the thought in my head,
little beyond the pleasures I lend to your bed.

But I have raised you to this,
raised you as a mother,
then been beaten down,
as your wife.

How you break me,
make me tired,
nursing your baby cries,
that send me flying
to do my duty to you.

My boy. I bend with your weight and I wonder
that I do not hear a
snap, a crack
throughout my back.

My boy. How you break me,
and yet I hold my head high,
to defy
my
crying, begging, you demand that I
move
always,
with. out. rest.

First, it is my breast,
nourishing you, causing you to love and follow me,
crawling lovingly upon my back,
which accepts the weight you are too comfortable to consider,
pressing on me,
lessened by your cheek,
nestling,
and so I smile,
carrying you silently,
while my back screams,
rising, rising, rippling through bone
with weight, and fatigue,
and yet, a scream is easily stifled by
a seared smile.

But then, you are kicking,
kicking and screaming to be
let down, to run and roam,
but I will stay here.
I will draw
the water
make
the food
the beds
the clothes
clean the
walls of comfort that are
your life.
For you to return to,
when you have seen all about,
seen the fields
roads
people
books
ideas
that will take you away
while I stay,
within the walls I made,
for you.

What do you think we do, she and I,
at home while you wander?
We know your tricks and turns,
we know your blunders and we
laugh and cackle,
anger inside out is a cackle laugh
and that is what we do
at you,
trapped within your walls,
which we built.

African women lift boys and wood onto tired back.
It is nothing, it is nothing.
While sweat drips,
but it is better than blood,
under Taliban cloth and silent soles.
It is nothing, it is nothing.
A virgin is ravaged by a dying man, to cure his incurable disease,
encouraged by the other medicinal men.
It is nothing, It is nothing.
A girl stares at Cosmo,
knows she will never fit between the pages.
It is nothing, it is nothing.