The Mirror

                                                                                                     Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin                                                               ...

Children we have not borne bedevil us by becoming themselves painfully sharp and unavoidable like a needle in our flesh. Coming home on the subway from a PTA meeting of minds committed like murder or suicide to their own private struggle a long-legged girl with a horse in her brain slumps down beside me begging to be ridden asleep for the price of a midnight train free from desire. Little girl on the nod if we are measured by the dreams we avoid then you are the nightmare of all sleeping mothers rocking back and forth the dead weight of your arms locked about our necks heavier than our habit of looking for reasons. My corrupt concern will not replace what you once needed but I am locked into my own addictions and offer you my help, one eye out for my own station. Roused and deprived your costly dream explodes into a terrible technicoloured laughter at my failure up and down across the aisle women avert their eyes as the other mothers who became usel...