maiden mother and crone you're all the generations that live under one roof, that house and clothe and feed and give birth to these angry hornets, the wasp-like fiends that suck the life out of you year after year, leave you barren with fear and choking on the vinegar of their ungratefulness. you are the years before me that come dry and drained, harangued and harassed for decades by toothaches and stomach pains, headaches and mystery stains. she's lying wrinkled and wasted in hospital beds now, surrounded by the infinite noise of beeps and whirrrs, the purr of the thousand machines hooked into her veins making her more robot than grandmother yet still she has enough energy to make you feel as guilty as she has been since you stole his eldest boy and failed to give him the first children, your children delegated instead to the cage of middleness, a place often associated with the disgust of being average. this is a delicate balance between crone and mother, maiden and crone, maiden and mother. you my mother are held in the skeletal embrace of the crone, crown head of us all, queen mother by right of this name; we are oppressed with anglosaxon love. oh, you do not know what it means to embrace all that you're given, all the things that you take, the love you mount on stake after stake like some prize to parade in front of the gates where your enemies shake fists and beg for your dead. oh, what goes on in your head? |