Mama's hands were smooth and cool
When she pushed my hair back and told me not to worry
Because sometimes mommies and daddies fight, but that's okay.
My childhood stretched before me
A long dirt road where daddy's absence hung in the air like
The sour smell of whiskey
On his breath
When he tucked me in at night
He always had the same shade of lipstick smeared on his neck
I found it later in a Walgreens downtown
Revlon number seven, Not Your Mother's Mauve
How ironic, I thought.
Because Mama never did wear lipstick

I remember nights where she sat in the living room
Painted blue, she kept her anguish in a secret place
Where I am not, and daddy always will be
She kept him there
Suspended in a light
Not of scrutiny but of love
And I hated him for it
Because my mother's loss would tear her apart
And I was left behind a closed bedroom door
The grieve for my happy family.

There's something about the sound of my father's records that fills me with solace
Putting the needle in the ridge
Hearing it catch the song
The dusty smell of age and sound
And finally the burst of a voice
of a long dead artist
filling the room with a haunted song

With time
I realized that the scars
I gave myself
in the deepest depths of my despair
Are merely shadows
across my skin
When compared to the scars I received
scraping my knee on the sidewalk
or
splitting my chin on a fence post
or cutting my arm
on a fallen bird feeder
in my backyard
when I ran too fast
with my childhood companions
in a state of blissful, happy, youth.

You have no voice
You have teeth
that gnaw at every part of my being
ripping my heart to shreds with the coldest of words

You have no voice
You have heat
that radiates through my body
with the most passionate of words

You have no voice
You have creatures
that swarm my insides
and fly around inside my stomach
and turn my knees to jelly
with the sweetest of words.

You have no voice
You have a microscopic turntable
that plays my favorite songs
and echoes them throughout my skull
with the most romantic of words

You have no voice
You have a power that allows you
to tear me apart
or put me together
or even make me love myself
with the simplest of words.

It burned my mouth
when I sipped my mother's bourbon
It seared my throat
when I tried my father's cigar
But if the opportunity arises
I'll do both again
because a day will come when they will not be there
to gauge my reaction
and find amusement in my wrinkled nose
and in my quick exhale
And likely
one day I won't have these reactions at all