it is february, and outside it is twelve degrees.
in winters past,
you dragged me to the shore every day to see if this time,
the ocean froze, and we could
walk away from here together.
sometimes you stood in the water for hours.
[but that was long ago.
thats in the past, waiting to be forgotten.]
it is february, and this morning you asked when it would end.
it's been seven thousand days,
you told me it gets better in time. how much time do i have to give?
you threw out every lock in your home.
you bent to kiss the bonfire goodbye and your hair caught the flame like
a hand catching a moth, and now
every room is full of candles pressed wick-to-wick,
melted wax hardening on the floor like cooling lava,
or congealing blood.
aren’t you sick of being somewhere between a natural disaster
and an emergency room tragedy?
aren't you tired of being sad all the time?
arent you sick of wearing the scent of burnt hair like perfume?
aren't you tired of crushed wings in your fist and careless,
accidental strength?
[or perhaps this is your dream, god knows
i've had stranger.]
maybe you always wanted to be a terribly sad monster,
a giant with the blood of a thousand bulls,
a titan preparing to birth
the gods.
picking at the skin 'round your nails till you bleed. broken teeth
embedded in the wood of the stairs.
you wanted to be zeus,
wisdom bursting from your skull like a bullet,
daughters like grey matter,
but you're just a labyrinth.
you're nothing but a prison,
a maze with a monster in the middle,
swallowing children and thread.
were you made for the minotaur or was it born for you?
you've been gathering sickness like moss on cave walls.
you've been pulling up the tiles from the bathroom floor.
last night's dew froze and clothed the stairs in ice.
there's a body floating in the bathtub and you promise it isnt mine
[i don’t know if i believe you].
you are undoing every knot i tied to keep myself together,
you are looking for anything in me to prove that i care. i do, i love you,
i love you like an ox, i love you like a child,
i am bursting with the lymph of every mother in my bloodline and i care for you like my own, but
in your mouth,
"loving" and "mother" don't fit together right.
a mother is someone who has too many monsters in her bed to fight the ones under yours,
"motherhood" is a synonym for "natural disaster,"
and all you can do is try to survive.
at this point i'm inclined to agree.
you make me feel like my womb is full of crude oil
and the distal phalanges of both your hands.
ive been sleeping with statues and dreaming about metal bones.
the only love you know is the kind where your clothes crumple on the floor.
you're always finding someone new to be the minotaur in your heart.
you don’t want theseus to find his way,
trailing thread as he traces mossy walls,
kicking bones aside.
when the minotaur dies,
you'll be nothing but a cave.
you already feel hollow when it sleeps, you say i don’t know if if you’re my minotaur
or another sacrifice.
i say [i don’t know if i’m your friend or
the closest thing to a mother
you’ve ever had.]
you have broken every tile.
you have cleaned the mirror countless times but your reflection still shows.
drink some water. wash your passageways with floods,
you don't need the bones of every failed theseus
littering your veins.
i can teach you to live with a minotaur like
a bezoar in your stomach.