Take No Prisoners

That very special emotional bond
that exists between mothers
and their daughters, an intimacy
like none other, a priceless jewel.
They are as one, indivisible,
each a clone of the other.

Mother lovingly, carefully
ministering to her beloved
charge, socializing, mentoring,
thoughtfully manipulating her
daughter ever more to resemble
what she is herself, imbuing her
values, her concerns: her daughter.

A conspiracy of love never to
become tarnished. Until rebellion
asserts its ugly presence when daughter
unaccountably prefers to become
authentically herself. The schism
agonizingly fraught with self
questioning, answered with
indignant self-validation.

By some odd psychic alchemy
forgotten in an amnesiac stupor
of wild disbelief, mother's own
rebellious years, but so helpfully
reminded by her own mother,
denial: the remote possibility of
comparisons; they do not compute.

Frigidity of emotional stability
the outcome, a chilly state of
uneasy truce, readily trumped
by any new and clearly inevitable
controversy where even the banal
becomes fraught with insupportable
freight. The mother-daughter
indissoluble bond of mutuality.