Dear JoJo:

Thank you for sharing your beautiful poem. How well you use words!

“As long as I keep my self Locked in a box, I am the prize.. Just my parts as you choose.. smothered within.. Ignored and abandoned.. I become les shiny.. As the wings of a swallow, I flutter towards you again”-

– your poem makes me think of conditional love- a parent loving only this or that part of a child and ignoring and/or disapproving of the rest. Maybe a parent loves a child’s looks but disapproves of her child’s thoughts, so the child (and later adult) remains silent or when she talks, she talks very quietly, afraid to be heard. Or a parent loves a child’s polite manners and disapproves of any anger or assertion expressed by the child,  so the child  learns to be passive- aggressive, to get her way without any overt expression of anger or assertion.

A child wants to be a parent’s prize, and she will pay the price, because she has no choice, a child desperately needs her parent. And she will flutter toward the parent again, and again, no matter how weak, no matter how sad and lonely.

This very pattern of the child with her parent often gets replayed in the context of romantic relationships, doesn’t it?

anita