two children

It is human nature
to want attention
without showing it with others.
And how severe is this selfish nature
if we are civilized people?
Two children approach
the same wooden seat of a seesaw,
splintered and worn past the grain.
They fight for that sore seat
until someone gives up, (someone must always lose).

This may be innocent enough,
even a little childish, but
reconsider those two children
as siblings.
As time withers down, past its own grain,
the seesaw becomes unimportant.
Mom, who do you love the most?
Two siblings,
wearing down their poor mother
(who does it to herself sometimes)
until she is old and broken.
Even then, they compete
instead of time-share.

One child
now lives by the sea
and has forgotten poor mother;
one lives in the same old farmhouse,
harboring jealousy
over time less spent.

Both have memories,
polluted memories
reconstructed to include comparison, greed, jealousy.
Both, now, want their mother
close to them,
so that these ashen memories can be sealed tightly
in mother's urn.
To make room, they must split
poor
mother
between the two.
They divide her
because they love her.
But, they will never be satisfied.
One will always wonder which sibling
got mother's better half.