Mother
you didn’t warn me about the boys who would take my body and claim it as theirs.
Mother, did I not hear you when you told me about boys who would put their bones on my bones and tell me that they owned me?
Mother,
I must have missed it, must have turned my ear away
the day you told me about the darkness.
Mother,
I have found it.
Mother, years ago I found it. Found that gaping hole in the air that ***** you right in, takes all your light away, takes all your good away.
I found that still sea air, the doldrums,
found that place where nothing moves,
but only shifts endlessly,
rocking back and forth, reminding you of
your wet solitude.
Mother, I know you try to shut the world out. I have seen the way your eyes glaze over
lukewarm
the stacks of magazines in the hallway,
my entire childhood in your bedroom.
I have found my dollhouses in the garage, the animal cages,
the rust.
I found the bell to my bicycle, I found the streamers.
Mother, I have watched you watch me and see something other than yourself. Mother, I know that you see me. How I watch the waves of possession overtake this house.
How money has given us too much,
how we shook our pockets to fill the void,
how we filled the barn with boxes.
Mother, I have watched you buy more boxes.
You have shut away
so much, you have heard me beg you to cut your hair,
to get rid of the dead,
to stop burying things that aren’t.
Mother, stop buying.
Mother, start seeing.
Mother, how many books can you read before you realize that you should just
write your own?
Mother, I have asked you to let me live and you have kept me close. I have asked you the questions that I already know the answers to. Mother I have watched you waste this house, cut holes in the walls and move from bed to bed like a withering animal,
I have watched you stack your clothes and still buy more,
I have watched you carve paths in the mountains of this home.
I have let you let the kitchen mold. I have watched you let the sink fill with a musk and a stench, I have let you fall in your own dust.
Mother, I am sorry.
Mother, we didn’t ask each other the questions that needed answering, we didn’t sail this wind at all. We only ever shifted, rocked and swayed in this house, let the gutters collect the trees, let the wasps inhabit the rafters. Mother, watch me build a new house. I will not let anyone in, I will not let them see how bare it gets when you have to keep moving. When you let your sails go and need to make yourself lighter and you
throw yourself out of that black hole.
Mother, watch me watch you as I try to do more than I can.
Mother, sell your books. You’ve already read them. Mother, eat the food in the kitchen. Your body is wasting away and your hair grows long. Mother,
do you see the way I have let my hair collect itself? How I have stopped cutting it? Did you hear me when I said I will comb it out and slice it off?
Mother, feel this rain. Feel how it is filling this dry earth, how it buries itself in the cracks of the dead silt, how it breathes, easy and weightless.
Feel this rain. It will swallow the ground, it will raise the sea and your sails will soak and I want to push you away. Mother,
find yourself an anchor, but don’t use it so often.
Mother, we need to start asking each other questions.
Mother, sail.