Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them -

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided -
and that one wears an orange blight -
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away -
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled -
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -
that the light is everything - that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading.  And I do.

my skin is cracked
my stomach an empty sea
my mouth is dry
so sand pours out
my hands are fragile
my eyes tired of searching
my lungs have collapsed
from breathing in
the deadly scorching air
in this desert dry of love

the things we do to keep
ourselves alive and living well
are things i do not forté in
and cannot truly grasp
why eat when i taste nothing
but clay and iron and death
why drink when the water is
barren on my tongue
nothing is as it should be
in this desert dry of love

exhausted, i shrivel away
no rain of thoughts to fuel
on the hot and burning days
the downpour never comes
so nothing grows on the terrain
there is only a sandstorm
it curls around
swirling
eroding
in this desert dry of love

this desert
dry dry desert
heats me to the core
and makes me into nothing
i am but a mound of ugly
common clay once more
easily shattered
fractured
destroyed
in this desert dry of love

I've fought myself
with my every thought
now there's no doubt
I killed the thing that I fought

I studied the maps
my lies that I bought
I set a lot of traps
it was only me that I caught

swallowed my pride
I was doing as I taught
I looked deep inside
I found the monster that I sought

Kirsten; like any wicked step mother you’d read about in children’s story books.
Her presented facade dissolved quickly with days passing since we arrived to reside in her home.
Ample kindness mixed with my first real impression of what narcissistic personality looked like.
Classically she had no children of her own at the time she was exactly the age I am now as I pen this unpleasant memory.
Oddly enough our body types are nearly identical though she was taller with short curly hair often chemically relaxed and dyed a darkened shade of red.
She was the only example of a plus size woman I’d ever interacted with; with a large chest I wished to resemble  when I grew up.
I was eleven at the time and extremely flat chested though I’d developed rosebuds when I was five being the overweight child.
Kirsten loved us- or she pretended detrimentally.
We bonded over the two plump tabby cats she owned though I detested doing the litter- being guilted into it because she had multiple sclerosis although argumentatively she’d have done the litter herself long before I came along.
Adult excuses though whereas her illness was real she didn’t really do much of anything after we came along.
Normalcy was just that at first- family sit down dinners around this white table with cylindrical chairs specked grey and white cushions.
I’d always be yelled at for crossing my one leg under my rear as I’d sit.
“You’ll break the chair that way, stop it” they said on the regular as I’d never remember.
Truthfully that position was comfortable and the chairs never broke.
One resided in my fathers empty home till a week ago- as strong as back in 2001.
Dad and Kirsten were heavy smokers at that point, chain smoking regularly in the front room of Dudley street though the smell would seep through the crevasse and deposit itself remarkably amongst the house.
She’d buy me identical clothes to her- one pink and white fuzzy sweater in particular then berate me for copying her. After all, a very narcissistic thing to do with me being  ******* eleven.
I loved that woman more than I’d care to admit.
She was my first motherly figure after being removed from the home of my severely mentally ill birth mother- she was still a form of normalcy though our relationship deteriorated unrealistically quick.
Before the family split up; we had a sit down dinner though Kirsten wasn’t present.
Having an MS flare I asked how she was when she trapped past the kitchen table toward the washroom.
Innocently enough, I was not prepared for the extremely violent outburst directed toward me- 12 at the time.
For the life of me I don’t recall the words though something like how much she did for our ungrateful family and I ran off to my bedroom without dinner crying from this unwarranted attack.
Everything changed after that point.
That was one of the only times my father emotionally soothed me; their life deteriorated into nightly fights and our fairytale life traversed into a puff of dust.
Kirsten was a dangerous reoccurrence for years after though the veil of particular wonderment was long forgotten.
I needed a protective female presence though I received a covert narcissistic *******.
C’est la vie.

“I wanted to be happy”
The words crept from my lips like scurrying little spiders when their home disturbed amongst darkened cobwebs in an untouched dingy room
Intrusive thoughts
Dismaying salvation of pathologized compliance
Masking behaviour for acceptance
“Stop spinning in that chair- it’s annoying”
Self expression became punishable
Dismaying youth- retribution beyond reasonable understanding
Belted and crying
Please stop, it hurts
Fearful avoidance
Nothing feels safe
Transmitting adulthood with repressed memories though awakened by medical emergency of your cat
Navigating uncertainty since July; desperately attempting to understand inner workings of trauma brain
Complex post traumatic stress disorder
Medical diagnosis though intrusive thoughts still catastrophic
Chronic pain with desolation
Desperately craving the touch of another human
Covid times; worsening depression combatting betraying myself with fathers abusive words while unproductively masquerading oversleeping
Powerlifting self regulation though collapsing under the bar.
If they wanted to talk to you
They would make effort
Though I still fawn my way to self acceptance
After all;
That’s what my parents taught me to do.