aloque

does my voice reach

your hardened ears?

Mother, mother, MOTHER,

my pleas, do they beseech

your eyes that forgot tears?

I remember the jingle,

when love was a caress,

of hands bedecked in bangles.

Now, you cannot care less,

you sleep, I lie mangled,

in our beds of duress.

I know your love is alive,

now it lies with another son.

It destroys me to believe

I am not your favourite one.

All your love was to deceive,

I cannot learn this lesson.

S is one of four children. He and his brother are both suffering from measles and are admitted in a ward I work in. His mother takes care of his brother while he is looked after by his grandmother. We did not know that the woman was his mother until 4 days after he was admitted. That's how much attention he got from her. She was lying down and playing with her other son when the doctors were discussing the child's mental status and how we were worried at his abnormal lack of enthusiasm. The child has no zest for life while his brother is a really active and extroverted. I was speaking to the grandmother and she said S has gradually become withdrawn and didn't speak as much anymore. The only sound I heard from him when I spent an hour with him today was a stifled cry when I gave him a shot. And the woman wants more children. Makes me want to drug her coffee and snip her tubes. (only partially kidding. I would do it in a lawless world).