Sylvie Hill

Others

My mother and my sister
They’d always say that I thought I was better
Better than everyone else.
But how can you think you’re worth something now
When your mother and sister are always putting you down?

And my step-mother had sense:
She said sometimes you gotta break a pattern
if you want to get better in the end.
But then look at her breaking off my father and his real daughters
to get a life of love and money for her kid and herself: hoarder.

And my father said I was boy crazy
And wouldn’t you be if guys were the one and only!
Only ones to give you attention?
To listen to your needs and wants and ambitions
And not put you down, shit on your self with criticisms?

And no wonder they say you’ll go crazy.
That single people die younger and lose memory.
There is no one reflecting back their story.
No one saying, “remember when you did this or that,”
or reminding you how much you liked a song or applejacks?

The other day I poured my soul
To a busy friend who said “yeah, I dunno.”
The other to whom I said I was sick,
In the grocery store, said: “Really, not again?”
And if I told her who I was in touch with? “Not him?!”

And no wonder I mused two gents in London.
They always wrote the right things, spot on.
And like my British gal pals with banter to share
Like a few of my guys friends with time to spare
And things to say of interest, and care…

How is it the ones who made you care nothing for you now?
That the ones who cared for you once are nowhere to be found?
How do you gauge a bond, invest when it will dissolve?
How do you buy in to hope, and trust, and how do you believe in love?

If perception be but an accurate reflection like a radar gauging the specs
Then I’d say with age comes more status quo and many lacking my interest.
And an hour at $150 a week can’t repair a cold, unaffectionate mother
And a poem never did seem to rid me of that other.

Sylvie 2018