My mother was
a cruel joke
taught with a raised voice.
Her pain
the foundations
for the better half of
my childhood,
her loneliness the next.
There is a forceful kind of sadness
that comes with being raised
by a woman
destroyed by her past,
your future is determined
by her emptiness.
You are left to wonder
how you could ever be
any different
than those who came before you
If living hurt this much.
But I want to be more
than what I was taught to be.
More than skin
and bone
and a raw heart
always ready to stop beating.