My Mother Got Married Without Telling Me, and Then I Had a Dream

I was riding on the back
of a beast of burden,
heavy-laden with tempered woes,
slipping on the downward path
toward Uncertainty,
toward being left alone.

The once-ringing voice that
I possessed falls now
on a half-deaf ear.
It distorts the crying echo
I've been shrieking into darkness.

At one point unknown my feelings
became invalid to you, causing me to
question,
...were you ever my mother?

I am forced to keep the rage tethered to the harbor,
and not drift toward the coast where I would find you farther
away.
So I keep them at bay.

But this does not assuage the burden or the woes,
and I am yet riding on the mule,
slow-stepping down teetering steps,
rain-washed and wet with clarifying rain.
But clarity, of course, is pain.