I hate you
Like a mother hates her children
After putting them to sleep.
I love you
Like a mother loves her baby
After flushing it down the toilet;
Young feet, feeling old in the stirrups
Like a vacant harbor
Or an abandoned ship.
It’s almost love, you see.
Like when I put my head
On my mother’s shoulder
And ask if she smells the rat
That must have died behind the wall.
When she tells me that New York
Was built on garbage and clam shells.
And that she doesn’t smell anything,
Save freshly cut grass.
There is no life in her feet,
So I check if she is breathing.
She is,
And I grind my teeth,
Feeling disappointed.
“It’s nothing at all, Lou,
That I am sad sometimes.
It’s nothing at all.”
I hate you
Like a mother hates her children
After dressing them for school.
I love you
Like a mother loves her baby
After removing it from the oven,
Thanking God for modern science.
–Connor Syrewicz