The Walk Home

( a poem for the mothers who smile at the school gate )

It doesn’t get easier;
they tell you it does,
and they told me too.
But it doesn’t.

Not when you’re handing them over
to a system you didn’t choose,
watching them hang their tiny little coats
on tiny pegs,
wondering if their hearts
hurt the way yours does.

It’s so hard, I find it so hard to let go
To wave them and see his little legs carry him to a place
Of such sterility and boredom
Yet this is not something he even questions
It’s like, he just does it, not doing it doesn’t even enter his mind
And I saw it
This morning
He’s inducted, he’s in the system, against my will
But following the will of my husband
I am seemingly losing him, inch by inch, day by day
Letting the ideas of strangers fill his mind
Instead of the ideas of his own adoring mother
God what do I do?
What should I do?

Sophie

More poems for this feeling: visit the Poem Library.