A guest in my mother's house

Into the depths of darkness
my mother turns,
turns her back on life
to journey an unseen path.
Turns her back on me, a guest now
in her vacant house.
A visitor, insecure,
uncomfortable on the hard
Puritan pew I inherited.

Though I sleep in her bed, eat
from her dishes,
I am outside looking in
to when
I was mothered
however awkwardly,
to when
I worshiped her competence,
courage, independence.
To when
I released, at last,
my resentment and anger