Child’s Poem

I Do Not Need You

I do not need Your love Your help Your support I can do it myself.

I do not need you To show me the ropes, How life works. I’ll figure it out For myself.

I do not need Your wisdom Your laughter Your embrace. I am shutting all of you out Closing myself up.

I don’t need you To prey on my need To draw me in and then Humiliate me Because of my human need.

I do not need you ever again. So good-bye for now, I’m closing up shop Crawling deep into my hole.

Where my life of lonely Defiant Impoverishment Will far surpass The exposure to you.

If I survive this lonely, Desperate childhood It will only be out of my sheer, Stubborn Spite.

I will bury once and for all My need My endless yearning For your love.

A robot will emerge, A pathetic facsimile of me Who will be immune to your madness.

If I survive this horror of a childhood I will crawl out of my hole And search through the rubble For the part of me that you tried to destroy.

And maybe one day I will come to understand That your shortcoming As a mother Came from your own Pathetic, yearning need.