I would laugh and brush it off.
It was a common question,
One that was asked too frequently.
"Where's your motHer? How is she?"

I always replied with something vague.
"She's been away for a while."
Or
"My mother? She's been sick so I haven't seen much of her."

Really, though,
She's at home wishing she could hurt me.
I know, I know,
She's my mother.
Mothers aren't supposed to do that, right?
You sEe,
My mother thought love came in bundLes of fist fights,
Of crying,
Of cuts and bruises.
I know she was raised that way, I know.

What I can't seem to understand, though,
Is that she passes this "love" down.
It makes me sad.
I wish she knew how much it hurt to see my mother in Pain,
But it also hurts to see a stranger behind drunken eyes lay her hands upon the child that made her into what she is now.

I hate her.
But she is my mother,
Right?

I was a mess, or, I still am.
But you loved that.
You loved the way my lips tasted like honey,
The way the sun kissed my tan skin.
I breathed summer air as if I was made of it and,
Well,
You fell in love.
I couldn't blame you,
I felt like a dream.
That was what I was, though.
When the sun set,
My skin no longer glowed,
My lips cracked,
The air in my lungs was cigarette smoke.
When the sun rose,
My hair shined,
My smile was bright,
My eyes were a brown-eyed honey pool.
As if the night didn't consume me,
The scars buried in my flesh were taken by the sun,
Returning me to grace the surface as a false advertisement of health,
Happiness,
Warmth.
I held the sun in my hands once,
Even during the night,
Until it was taken away from me.
The sun pulls my strings until I cannot dance any longer,
For the moon catches me in her gentle light,
Allowing me to bask in the unreachable moments of the day.

It was terrible, what she did.

She caressed my cheek with hands not so kind,
She grabbed my wrists with a grip too tight,
Her fingers left light little bruises across my throat,
And I called her my mother.

The woman before me screamed obscenities.

"I hate you."
                      
                        "You're nothing."

"You're not the daughter I wanted"

I called this person my mother.
She gave life to me after all,
I should be grateful.

Even if the bruises take a while to go away.
Sometimes the cigarette burns scar.
The cuts and fractures never completely heal.

I call this my mother.
                         Sometimes, it's terrible what she does.