This feeling of burn out. Akin to scratching at bare cave walls with fingernails bleeding, cuts and scabs days old, trying to leave a mark on an unmarkable place. A trapped snarling tigress; exhausted skin and bones, angry eyes glinting beneath thunderous brows, milk leaking from teats, belly still tender. Unable to fight but the spirit is willing– although to what cause as the spirit of fight is one borne from guilt of not being the mama I thought I would be.

Meanwhile it is as though my cubs are playing next to a fire that feeds on my remains, using the burnt embers of dreams to trace fragments of imagination; glimpses of a world outside these walls. 

Burnt out like a wild forest set aflame from not being tended to. The clearing had to occur but the regrowth is yet to be seen. Blackened and bare, parched, waiting for tender hands to see the fruitful forest it once was. Here I am, a mother that is both the wild forest and the tender hands. Yet how can it be that I am both, and still grow sweet seedlings, into young saplings, into trees with roots firm, branches wide, leaves open to the warmth of the sun? 

When the mother tree lies dormant, unable to awaken from her self-imposed slumber it begs the question: what will remain for the seedlings to witness? For the cubs to learn from? A martyred mother, or one that gave herself the grace to bloom? My prayer is the latter.