The bright green leaves picked at by tiny fingers
and your mother taking your boyfriend
red blood
it must have turned from her shirt to your eyes
the night you found them drunk.

Now, it is 30 years later,
those same eyes focused on mine,
Shouting at you in the parking lot of the hospital
to take your badge and burn it
'You aren't my social worker.'

Playing with my life as she did yours.
Me, learning.

How we crawl into the crevices of a mind, crouching in wait
to find a dent
a scratch to pick apart
and send screaming into the light.

We only want the best.
Though, is it for us, or for them?
We never know.

Or do we?

At night, I think of  how we are the same
Twenty-four years apart,
still jumping from man to man like dragonflies,
our colorful wings, torn and glistening.

I found mine, but lose his bright orange youth nightly.
And love is never further away than the next place we look,
but always at just the tip of our tongues,
if we use them right.

I remember at twelve,
practicing break-ups in the bathroom every night.

'I'm sorry, I know you love me, but I have other commitments.'

You were the one with the damage, and it crept over me
a tarp over a clear blue pool on a winter afternoon.
Dead leaves crowding the corners,
tiny bee carcasses: my insecurities piling over the top.

'I'm just not good enough, I must do something about this weight.'

All of your ways boiling over into mine.

The morning I got my first period, you laughed with my sister at my excitement, instead of leaping for joy, and I watched the two of you giggle, my cheeks growing red with anger and shame.

'Aren't I now a woman?'
'Aren't I now yours?'

You always pointed at the corners when I cleaned:
'Do You see that dust? It isn't enough...it's just not enough.'

I've had enough, mother.

The wind blows smoothly into the arms you gave me.
As I write, I am met with a penetrating silence.

This is enough.
It has to be.