Splintered Pieces

On being a parent and viewing your children as an extension of self.

How can I survive

with whole parts of me

severed and walking around,

affecting change on the world

with me unaware?

Cells divide, soup combined

and I am multiplicity

wandering around in the dark,

while I sleep on

wondering,

wasn't one of me enough?

 

A disorder of birth,

all my multiple personalities

up and walking around-

getting smaller as they teeter

towards the horizon

where I can no longer tie their shoes for them

I don’t know how they will feed themselves

if they will remember

how to love.

 

I can feel these pieces of me missing,

like limbs long ago severed,

still itching.

I cannot gather them back,

sew these appendages

into the whole again.

They are become their own,

seeds of trees planted and watered

running down the road.

 

They run so fast

knowing I might

swallow them up again

if I find them in the woods 

too long in the cottage,

I may sneak them back

into the oven,

have them for supper.

 

I could

suffocate my offspring

loathing the thought

of parts of me slowly leaving

me a shattered person,

when it is my life’s purpose

to bleed this way,

to leave pieces

of myself behind

to divide and grow

and walk away-

and for me

to not survive.

Reviews

[AK]

A fascinating glimpse from an unusual perspective. Thank you all.

[Vitamin A]

This is wonderful and devastating all at once. Terrific portrayal of a multiple personality disorder, it almost reminds me of reading Girl, Interrupted