my mother tells me that I cannot be

         everything for everyone.

she is, of course, right.
but I do not have an explanation scripted,
so I gape at her.

        how can you be everything for everyone,

she repeats,

        when you are barely enough for yourself?

        these games you play,
        don't you tire of them?

        how long will you keep pretending
        in this charade?

says it as if this is what I want,
as if insufficiency is what I desire,
when it was she who first
taught me to play.
I am jealous that she has
so quickly forgotten that
these games are all we’ve ever known.

         what do you stand to gain?

she demands again,
and I am not imagining
the desperation echoing
my own unanswered pleas,
imitating the comfortable pretenses
of my own well-worn facade.

her voice is the gunshot in the marathon
I can’t remember if I’ve

started or finished,

and I wonder later if it is

clarity or confusion

she detects in my eyes when I respond,

          what do we stand to lose?

I am finding pieces
of you
in places I never
thought to look.

your hair
in the shower drain.

the scent of your cologne
on sweaters I thought I gave away.

your lilting, half-dollar smile
knitted into the faces of so many
strangers passing by
who look nothing like you
but I always stop
always turn
always ask
                                                             ­                 have we met before?
as if it were that simple
to start over.

it makes me laugh now
to think that there was ever
once a time
when I thought I needed
these parts of you
to complete me.

there is a kind of heartache
a name we don't dare speak
but I see it on your face now
in the familiar way
you bite your lip
it is spelled painstakingly
in bloodshot eyes
and salt-streaked cheeks
that before
they were yours
were mine

we are sitting on the curb of your driveway.
you are peeling an orange and I am watching your piano fingers
twist the tough skin away in a methodical rhythm that would be
almost comforting,
except I know that this isn’t real and you aren’t here.
the backs of your knuckles
are covered in constellations of scars still.
it surprises me that I thought they wouldn’t be there,
as if somehow your ghost would no longer carry any traces
of the pain I was so oblivious to six years ago.
I can hear your sister fighting with her boyfriend
in the kitchen again.
back then you used to joke that he’d end up in prison one day.
you were right, and I’m sure you’d find it funny if I told you this,
but I say nothing and I am ashamed
that this part of me has remained unchanged.
you pass me an orange slice and
we are probably listening to an Eminem song,
though I can’t be certain which one.
it doesn’t matter,
because after all,
this is a dream.
I will pretend I don’t know the words like always
and make up my own raps,
knowing that you will laugh.
and in this dream, I will laugh with you.
In this dream, I do not hate you for leaving me only
with these perfect memories and hazy recollections
for company.
instead, I will think that perhaps
time has done me a favor by erasing
the parts that would would make me hate myself
more than I hate you.
your face is never the same when I look at it.
mismatched and jagged,
as if Picasso had painted a loose likeness
from the scraps of days like these.
and I know that this is my punishment
for never noticing the important things
while you were alive.
six years, and I am already forgetting you.
I wonder if you would be disappointed or delighted
by the way I recite these seemingly insignificant details
to strangers when they ask
what you were like
not for them, but for me,
because one day I will wake up and no one will remember
that you had a bicycle bell voice,
and that your favorite color was the stinging blue
of candle hearts,
though you could never get your hair to match it quite right.
they will never know what it feels like
to hear your name leave their lips,
always in past tense.
the private agony of
was and must have been and I’m sorry.
they will never know that
I still write you in the present
and that one day
I will leave this poem for you
when I no longer need someone else
to peel my oranges.

if my body is a temple,
then you've desecrated it.
touched me with irreverent hands.
said            

'woman'

like it was a heresy
in itself
to breathe
and feel beautiful
in the form I have no control over.

have you forgotten
where you came from?
you have made martyrs
out of saints.
out of your mother,
and her mother,
and her mother,
so far back
that you no longer recognize
a goddess
when you see one.

the womb is a place of worship.
every curve,
every flaw,
every edge
of her body
a hymn waiting to be written.
we have made sacrifices
upon sacrifices
to appease the entitlement,
to cover the shame
they make us feel
when they say

'woman'

at an altar.
at a shrine
men made
to make themselves
idols.

'woman'
she's somebody's daughter.

'woman'
somebody's sister.

'woman'
somebody's mother.

'woman'
somebody's lover.

'woman'
somebody's friend.

but first,
she was somebody.