My Mother Wants to Know

My mother wants to know
why I don't have babies yet.
She wants to know
why I don't adopt them,
why I don't select one and bring it home.
My mother wants to know
why I can't be happy,
why I refuse to accept
that life just isn't going to be that great.

But it's not about reproduction;
it's not a matter of He won't sleep with me? No skin
off my back. Who wants to have sex
anyway? I'll just adopt a baby and that
will be all the love I need.
It's a matter of Right and Wrong, as in,
it's wrong to use your kids for that,
wrong to let them watch you live in miserable disappointment,
all the while telling them you want them to be happy
--Do as I say, not as I do--
wrong to to let them think it's normal for parents
not to love each other.

But--says my mother, confused--
people do that to their children all the time.

Uh, yeah. I know they do.