Ambivalence

The broken light of morning dawn, children’s laughter

and the promise of a new day. My mother’s voice,

advice; the sound of her tears. The feel of a knife

through flesh, through fruit, through bone, a vital

separation of things. Juvenile dreams of a better world,

technicolour rainbows bleeding into the sidewalk

where strangers first met. The passing

of one beloved. A self-indulgent purity

in the depressive spiral. Gaze into the void;

staring back at a broken heart, a solemn

promise betrayed. The hope of something more

and a fear of what’s to come. It’s me, my self,

and the selves that came before. It’s the self

that’s yet to be.