A Family meeting called,
We sat in the living room,
Together in open space
“Been years,” I said.
You sat at the corner of the couch
Looking like a raisin shriveled up, knees brought to your chest—
Like a child.
Me wondering when you got so short.
Were you always this short?
Because I remember you standing and roaring
Over me.
Tony, leading the meeting says, “Say something nice about Mom.”
And y’all did.
Y’all all managed to sputter and heap praises at her feet.
Tony said, “You (pointing at me) tell Mom something you
Like about her, too.”
I cleared my throat and looked dead at her, “I don’t know you Anymore,
And given all the wrong you've done to me, It’s difficult to find Something nice to say, I’m sorry.”
Afterwards, y’all told me how cruel I was, asking me, “why couldn’t you Just go along?”
“I went along,” I said. “And honesty can be cruel, but necessary, Right?”
I wanted to scream, that’s what I really wanted to do.
Scream to the world all she had done to me,
Like when she choked me to the point of near death because I was
Always the easy one to blame, or the time she threw my baby kitten
Out the window to crash on an asphalt road. What happened, I still
Wonder, to that small kitten. More than likely, it died. Or the time
She slapped me across the face and called me a ***** because
I put on cherry lipstick. I was only eleven years old. Or when she
Refused to sign my FASFA forms so that I could go to college, Telling me, “Trash can’t go to college.”
Or…"just get over it,” y’all say, interrupting me.
“I could get over it if the things done to me were at least Acknowledged,”
I said, done with y'all, too, and walked off.
