Missing Childhood

Frustration, anger and jealousy,
Why do these feelings take over me?
I look back to where it all began,
to my childhood. I knew poverty first hand.
A single mother scraping change for drugs,
while we three children desperately wait for love.
We sat by and watched him raise his hand,
he wanted to prove that he was a man.
We watched through the tears and pain,
as she went back to him over and over again.
We saw our mother too loaded to speak,
while we searched hoping for something to eat.
We grew up with this crazy vision of love,
in it were no hearts, hugs, or white doves.
The day came for us to grow up too fast,
the days of playing in the rain were past.
Teenagers neglected, searching for love in new places,
we found support in our boyfriend's faces.
With no supervision, rules, or structure,
three teenage girls became mothers.
Now the cycle is threatened to be repeated,
until we stand up and try to defeat it.
Trying to be there for a daughter whenever we can,
raising a son from a boy to a man,
We may not all succeed the task,
the mind is scarred from all that’s past.
But for some of us girls, the cycle will break,
the place of a respectable mother we'll take.
This is the story of where my feelings came,
I do not hold my mother to blame.
I grow from this and look ahead,
whether I will have success is unsaid.