How to be not enough.

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.