Quality time should never be divided

Classified by columns, rows, and sections

It should never be dictated nor documented

Punched and checked off like hours on a time card

Love should never be measured by time and monies spent

Handed out and rationed like wartime goods

Caring should never be limited

To reasons, rationales, and current moods

Parents must be more than people, shelling out to maintain

There is supposed to be a link, labeling a family as a unit

Not as a box of spare parts randomly thrown together

So why is it, then, that all I see

When I look around and try to speak

Is checklists of "things to do together today"

Cards punched "15 minutes for dinner - check"

And masks labeled "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday..."

All I hear are well rehearsed apologies and excuses

As if the "person" had read it off the script of an 800 number.

I never see them, never know them, so are they real?

How do I know I'm not speaking to a robot or recording

Repeating the same phrases of "I'm sorry", "I'll be late" and "I won't be coming home today"

What happened to the old paradigm where parents come home for the evening?

Most kids are fostered off or displaced from the world

How many do I know who have not run away before?

Which of those thousands of faces still communicate?

These people have no mothers or no fathers or both

Having parents is hardly considered functional anymore

How can it be, when to each other, neither is real?