Once, I asked my mother what it felt like to be in love

She told me:
"I still question now
How to get every sticky word
Out of my whirlwind mind

When I can't focus on one thing at a time
And wonder how to tear myself apart
Just to let you know everything"

She gave me a list
And told me to write down
What I was thinking

1. He calmed you
When you became a storm
Shut down the thoughts you had
But over time
He went from being the center
To being the hurricane

2. You were always afraid
Of religious people
Afraid they would shoot you down
But when you found out about him
You could no longer think nor move

3. You knew if you tried
You could be smart
But with so much illness,
That was near impossible
But he refused to let you think that
Until you started to feel insignificant
Compared to him
You felt nothing

4. You would carve his image
Etched into your nightmares
Like a marble stone made of glass shards
Perfected by the hands of Donatello
Getting down to every little detail
Graffitied yourself into my skin
With the letters:
"This is my muse"
And picked your way into
Everything I was and am

You squirmed your way under
And started to spread like a disease
Latching on
With the strength of silk cocoons

5. I learned what it meant
To hate someone so much
Because they became your poison
The liquor you drank one too many times
A drunk I can only get away from
By throwing my self respect away
And inhaling a fume of forgiveness

When I let my mother know this,
She just looked at me in pity
And told me that was how it started
With my father

She pushed me away
And told me to keep writing

6. When I told you
I wanted to die
I didn't mean it figuratively
But you looked at me
As if I had made a joke
And every scar
Screamed your name

7. A self taught lover
Who whispered her poems
To men who didn't listen
And to women too high to care

The definition of love
Became the equivalent
To the adjective of pain

8. Instead of focusing on how
They would scrunch their eyes when they laughed
Or the way they wrapped their fingers together
As if going into prayer
Or how a sunset reminded you of
The way their eyes looked
When they were open and honest
And not feeding others ******* from a spoon

You focused on the more shallow things
How they never seemed to say sorry without laughing
Or how he made you feel like a skeleton
A background image
Painted onto a beginners portrait
That was lit up into flames and
Had gasoline poured over the edges

9. You learned all the different routes
You could take to catch a glimpse
Perfected your timings
Down to a millisecond
Memorizing the way for an easy escape
And taught to hold your breathe
While you were buried under tides

I knew I had to get away,
But the thing was,
I didn't know how

10. If I were to ever fall into the trap
Of baby-making, I knew
That I would have two boys
One named after you
And one after the man who taught me what love was
And what it meant to lose it for the first time

When I told my mother how I felt,
She just looked at me with tears in her eyes,
And warned me of what I was up against

She told me
"Darling, you will face mountains and volcanoes
You will push stars and moons
You will learn to clip your wings before you learn how to talk
And you will learn what it means
To be a spider caught in another's web
And you'll hurt, but you'll enjoy it, because it makes you feel alive"