The most potent emotion I can recall
from my childhood is a feeling of needing
something I could not explain. I have countless
memories of pestering my mother in the living room
of our home, complaining that “I’m bored,” and
“I want to do something.”

My mother usually encouraged me to be
constructive at first, such as finishing my share
of the housework, which I often neglected.
She knew this wouldn’t work, it wasn’t what I was after,
but still, she felt motherly enough to remind me.

After this option was shot down,
she would canter through a list of activities: drawing,
playing outside, reading; all of which sounded unappealing,
and still, my dissatisfaction would fester
like an ache I could not mend, an unmet need
I couldn’t understand at the time.