I am useless,
Clueless,
Naive
And foolish.

I am a child
Of chance.
A night of romance.

I am an early-morning
Call,
A surprise to all,

Aren't I, mother?

One that can use no tool.
A waste to the teacher,
Within a school.

Aren't I, father?

A child
'Out of control'.
Seemingly 'too old'
To be consoled.

But alas,
You wish for connection.
How should I know of it?

I am prone to rejection.

Subjection,
To your own mistake.
A choice you made.

The icing on the cake.

But now I am far
Away from your pain.
For I live in worth,

As you live in shame.

Your hot breath still
Tortures me in my sleep.
At the most vulnerable moments,
You are a plague to my name.
How much more can you break me?
Please, God, let me give up
and let your blood seep into my bones.
You are the parts of me
I hate the most.
I wonder how much longer
Your grey skin and ***** fingernails
Will keep me up at night.

Her heart could heal
the heather,
Even in the colder weather's grip -
snapping the bony, brittle twigs
And sparkling sharply on abandoned leaves -
She could find her ease
On the downy carpet of the diseased,
Gather their lost limbs
Like a forgiveness-
That warm welcome of forget.
She could rest her head,
And bloom,
Bright blossom gazing up at the moon
More often than the sun,
Her fire blazing on -
A little hearth, among the heather
Warming roots in the
Colder months.

I wont care about you today,
As how I cared for you yesterday,
And how I'll care for you tomorrow.

I wont reach for you today,
As how I've held you dear all these years,
And how I will definitely continue to.

I wont seek your attention today,
As how I have longed for your affection,
And how I soon will beg for the absolution of it.

I wont have your promised advancement today,
As how yesterday and the days before,
Was only ever amorous play...

As your ash-heap talking,
I wont have it today,
I cant..

For the world is dark,
But my feelings are never the same shade,
Makes it so much more painful...
Like an angel stuck in hell.

And it saddens me to know,
That our time spent together...
Is longer in my mind,
than in the physical realm.

That our memories,
Last further than our future,
And my love for you..
Outwins and ruins my own temple.

Everything is connected,
I feel like a volcano that has been dormant
but want to release all of my tension.
I want to show you my emotions;

So you can see I'm not a doormat,
I just keep my feelings below the surface,
It's resulted in my body doing the same
Which is why I'm in constant pain.

My trauma has created tunnels of magma,
I can't tell where they end or begin
It's frightening and leaves me upset,
There's no one I can share this with.

I hope for one day to lay out my feelings,
Let everything flow;
Like tears, they'll roll out of me
Covering everyone I've allowed to see

Then will come the tricky thing,
to never bottle anything again.
I don't want to reap havoc on them,
I want to stay empty and peaceful

To know where I end and begin,
It would solve something, wouldn't it?
But I feel like a volcano.
Physically and within.

This poem is a response to one I wrote five years ago: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2605739/in-which-i-am-brutally-honest-about-my-mother/

My eyes blaze with guilt,
and an outrage at being guilty.
No, at being wrong.

While I waited for the crows,
I was devoured by the chasm
between my father’s brows.
Felt my stomach drop
as I fell into the ground.
Even when I’m right,
I wish I were wrong.
But that’s just how it is to be the victim.

See, my mother was played with by god.
She’s quick to love only to be abandoned.
I remember her whispering to us,
in the middle of some nights
as if we were the daughters of Medusa.

My mother was hurt by god
She did not create sin but
she’s spent most of her life running with it.
Running from it,
running to it.
And I think at some point
she felt too distant to be worth it.

I thought I wanted to hate her,
but it’s impossible to deny her humanity and
to keep trying would only end in tragedy.
I know I’ve ignored her and
I know that worsened the distance.

I want to personally lay the burden
of how I love onto her shoulders,
tell her “You taught this to me.
I watched you love others from the mountains to the sea and I’m

sorry for the years I didn’t let you love me”.

But healing happened in a crockpot,
that wasn’t plugged in.

As a child, I felt so betrayed
because she was my favorite,
and yet I felt so alone
on nights when I couldn’t use her back
as my pillow.  

I tried to understand the kaleidoscope of her broken pieces,
and yet I wish I persisted as I got older.
I thought I protected my peace,
and maybe I did,
but it took me ten years to warm up
my shoulder.
I was sad about the absence,
until I became mad and indignant.

A case of unrecognized bias.
By having two drug-addicted parents,
and a lot of black-and-white thinking,
One had leaves, so the other was poison.
Two different flowers in the same garden.

And in that garden,
I’m weeding out the past
and digging in the dirt using only my hands.
Creating stability and forgiveness at that.
Forgiveness for my mother, who has grown despite my doubt.
Forgiveness for my father, for dying
at the hands of the devil he couldn't live without.
I am perpetually digging even further for hope.

And there is always potential for hope.