Sacrifice

It is a culture where love means self-sacrifice
Where one's life one's dreams are the price
One pays for one's loved-one's happiness
For their smiles to fill one's own emptiness
This duty carved on one's chest upon birth
Was ordained for Lady Fate's secret mirth

Sacrifice is a beautiful symphony of silence
One who gives has that sweeping arrogance
Then believes appreciation of love is assured
For fear of otherwise has one's heart lured
Yet nary a word to say to persist or to desist
So this is the world in which she must exist

Now her turn to build her Mother's dreams
And to gain worth by her Father's schemes
Should she falter along this twisted journey
Surely her love shall come under scrutiny
Markings of selfishness are such failure'
Under her skin she wears them as a bandolier

Acclamation of love is ever close to breath
In this icy land that slowly guides to death
The sacrificial cultures of the distant past
Future leaves the faithful followers aghast
Same as their children's bewildered cries
To mourn their burgeoning dreams' demise

She of same cloth and new cut crave to hear
Reassurances to dispel this hanging fear
That should she give her life as a birth's price
Her mother claims not that it does not suffice
That her love and dreams pay a parenting toll
Then to her end the father sells not her soul

Statues of silent reprimand they two remain
For pretty compliments shall make her vain
As they believe she ever trip upon her pride
So their love they shall never in her confide
Even had they need for sentimental words
Their voice would tweak and drop two-thirds

Beneath their stony demeanor lies a smile
For they know her children she shall style
After the land of love that she embraces
Self-sacrifice by self-love her hand replaces
For without a strike she bears the sword twice
For that she epitomizes her culture of sacrifice

Written July 2004.