The Love I Didn't Feel From You

Mother, what have you done to me that my youth has been so broken?

"I love you" trembles on my tongue

Yet it is frozen - I love you, but not who you are.
I am made to crave my mother, are you really my mother anymore?
It's not of my nature to be cold - I want to say "I love you" and "Everything's okay"
but everything is broken and I am still trying to heal
I wish, I wish
Someone knew what it was like to cry this hard
My father taught me to cry well
And so I do.
And in all the tears I've cried, I think I'm learning to love it 

How it cleanses and bubbles and rages

the way a storm is alive and terrifying and electric.
not that it doesn't hurt, but that I am strong enough to feel it now
Though it still hurts, burns from within me like demons escaping
And then I am scared, scared of the world, and maybe of what I have become.

but I am learning to trust the world again and to trust myself along with it

I can admit I want my mother

Yet, not the one who screamed me out between her legs

but a mother who remembers.
And someday, maybe I will be a better one

and rain the love upon my children that I didn't feel from you.