The Only Child

The Only Child

Born an only child of a marriage
that did not last she was torn
between loyalty to father or mother
her emotions and love stretched
between the two insulated from
one another through hostility and
geography, and she exhausted
from their pitiless scorn demanding
her decision, one or the other.

Her unwavering devotion to both
mandated distance from both.
In her middle age, regretting of
the bleak reality she had failed to
forge a shared life of her own,
alone, lonely, she returned to help
usher her mother, then her father
through illness toward gentle death.

She contemplates her image now,
resembling them both and with 
her passion for belonging and
longings long spent, still now,
as she was then, a lone child. Now
she dreams of what she never 
had, but still somehow, lost.

In an age of emotional distance
and casual social commitment the
epiphany of an absorbing, healing
intimacy of loving relationship
never materialized so could never 
be consummated. Her life instead
consumed by dedication to work
and to never-ending studies she
enrols in academic art appreciation.