Month: August 2016

Your mother moved a strange man into your house from Montana
A love interest she met on the internet
They had only met in person once
for less than a week
She’s looking for love in all the wrong places
and you barely talk to her anymore
Can’t give her the social interactions she needs

She’s lonely and you see it
can smell the desperation
but a child isn’t a replacement for a community
your hands are too small
your skill set modeled on cavitied bones

Montana will defend you later
When she’s screaming and crying at you
because you left some crumbs
under the toaster
when you cleaned the kitchen

Your mother told you to pack to move to Florida
To be with a strange man she met on the internet
They had only met in person once
for less than a week
You find a naked picture of him in your scanner later
all tan and body hair and baby oil
She said she found out he was cheating on his wife
with three women in different states
wanted to out him
and abruptly stopped making plans
to move
You had already said your goodbyes to the desert

Your mother told you to pack for late summer
You are going to live in Bisbee with an artist
and work
She’s been talking to them on the internet
They haven’t met in person even once
but it might be character building
She forgets at the end of July
and your silent relief
is louder than your quiet cries of protest

Now you are grown
You’ve been to so many therapists
because you want to know
how to be consistently mothered
to receive care without
waking up and wondering where all the adults are
and you can’t do it by yourself
not yet

You’re lonely and you see it
Can smell the desperation
But a single-mother isn’t a replacement for a community
You know as much
that you are tired of feeling like
a backpack full of sand
while your mother
is trying to swim

Pull the skin from the corner of the ankle
into an even tear

Circle the calf
pulling flesh into lines
until you have a small rope

Tie fidgety hands together

Mitigate

And wipe up the blood

I’m always trying to get to the ocean in dreams
as in childhood
like it’s a mother full of secrets

At low tide
I can only see a tiny fraction of the
complicated relationships
I need to learn
and respect

Waves like a comforting come hither
and I know I need to be in the water

I am assessing how to move my limbs
heavy with sleep and dread
The demand of a physical presence
vigilant senses
arms that won’t wrap all the way around

I am always so pleased
when it reveals just a little of itself
to me

Rip the wound open.
Put some saw dust and meal worms in its gaping chasm.
Half-bury candles in the loose soil and light them.
Grate dead skin over the flame.
Keep your hair safe and covered.
Lay fresh cut flowers to dry out.
You are not making an explosive,
you are the explosive
and this altar is a fuse.

A pretend ritual for a pretend adult.

Bury it.
Maybe you’ll forget.

Bury it.
Leave it on the river bank.

Let the birds turn the mud
like compost.
The wick is a torch,
the wick will feed a fire so hot
that the ghosts of anger will exhume the flame
to melt the mud to liquid glass.
It hardens.
You harden.
A wound as a glass eye on the verge of splintering.

My anger is a less potent gasoline
I am still extracting out of water.
I need it to get me out of bed.
I need it to weaponized my words,
to make my hands knives with the
multiplicities of blade dance;
to ask for anything,
to not get lost.

My anger is a love
buried in a boneyard
full of worms and wounds.
It reminds me to touch those
that still visit.
That I have a stake in
the ways the world moves.

Rip the wound open
let a scale of sacredness slide out.
I am grateful
I am awful
I am angry
I am trying to get warm enough next to the flame
without getting burned.