How to be not enough.
For Poppy's 1.2.3. Challenge
Below is my second entry for Poppy's 1.2.3 challenge, to write a set of instructions as a poem:
1. Eat well. This is your last chance to be enough.
Give over your body, let all you have seep across the divide.
Be leached to exhaustion, but eat on, a foie gras goose,
And call it unconditional love.
2. Give succour on schedule, and whenever you’re told.
Though hollowed you’ll leak like a crumbling damn.
Hold back the waters, but let the rest flow,
For you are building the land.
3. Connect, attach, put them down, let them learn,
To trust you’ll be there, that they’re alright alone.
Be eternal, be perfect, mind the rod at your back.
Look like it’s easy. Tell, don’t show, if it’s not.
4. Don’t do it the way that you do it already,
Cede instinct to those who know best.
Ask for help, just a little, your choices are yours,
It’s nice to feel useful, not used.
5. Give them protection, let them get bruised,
Sooth them standing on their own two feet.
Respond to their needs and build them a prison
Of boundaries that set you all free.
6. Let them go, hold them close, the door’s always open,
Be proud of the work that you’ve done,
But never forget that you failed them so often,
And they owe you their love in return.
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Comments (12)
Those last lines are everything. Parenting can be a confusing mess and sometimes you don't see the mistakes until years later. But your failures were all done with love and they do owe you love in return.
So sorry I missed this one -I seemed to have missed a lot of them actually-not sure quite how. Cleverly done-I loved how you captured the contradictions of parenting 🤍
Parenting is so bitter sweet, yet parents are the master of the double speak, when they say one thing and you know they mean another. Perfected is when you slyly double it back to them.
This is so cleverly written Hannah. As Donna said, the double entendre are used so effectively. 'Look like it’s easy. Tell, don’t show, if it’s not.' Is such a great line. 'It’s nice to feel useful, not used.' was another of my favourites. 'Let them go, hold them close,' was also wonderful. Well done with this one!
I love this and found the title very ironic! I love the double entendre with each line, saying one thing but meaning something else. The opposing language and way this is constructed made for a smile worthy read! Great work Hannah!
This was marvelous, and more than enough! I loved the biting sarcasm of each line, mocking the contradictory advice hurled at mothers. Only mothers will understand this. The same expectations are never placed on fathers. All fathers have to do is exist. Absent fathers get some wrath, but leniency is given to fathers who live under the same roof, unless their behavior is diabolical—and even sometimes then, they still have unshakable devotion from those who secretly resent them. It’s the strangest thing, the way so much pressure for humanity to keep going is placed on the backs of mothers. You’ve given words to something that haunts so many of us mothers, that programming that we’ve failed our children and therefore failed ‘the future’ of mankind. That we didn’t protect them; that we protected them too much and coddled them, leaving them wholly unprepared. And you’ve done it with your wit! ‘Be eternal, be perfect, mind the rod at your back. Look like it’s easy. Tell, don’t show, if it’s not.’ Oh, that’s good. So much said in those two lines. Stand tall, and let your complaints fall on deaf ears, but never collapse. Never require assistance. So good. 🤍
Aw...felt every bit of this. I like the way you so beautifull described what it's like to be a parent. And I like the way Teresa said about "no guaranteed outcome" That's the crux. You do the very best you can, based on the tools you were given and developed and try to love them and support them...and it could still backfire....it could still go wrong...and you remember the times you let them down and failed them...sometimes more than the times you got it right. It's such a rollercoaster going through a minefield of good and bad... Well done on this stunning entry, though, Hannah. As usual, getting me in the feels!
I guess this is what it feels to be a parent, huh? It's just so scary. Like Teresa said, there's no guaranteed outcome, lol. I loved your take on this challenge!
Wow such amazing language in this all throughout. I love the particular word choixe. Especially “it’s nice to feel useful, not used.” That’d a sentiment I can fully agree with! Loved this!
Oh if only we could stick to such a set of instructions, and yet if we did, no outcome is guaranteed anyway. But it’s easier to edit something that already exists right? Well done you, brilliant 😍
I think every mother will be able to relate to this. I could certainly see my own thoughts/fears/hopes reflected here. Excellent.
Beautiful and deep.