Hotboxed Minivans.

I go back and forth over those upcoming days:
do I dress myself up for Boo’s eighteenth birthday?
do I play myself down and just let her have space?
I will spend the first in silent awe of her beautiful face…

it’s so difficult to describe to anyone who may be asking –
in any words or phrases in any language that is known to me,
the deep losses and emptiness that linger above me, cloudily,
my mind feels confined to the place that’s defined by utter misery…

to be a mother to a daughter who’s lit the darkest of my nights,
a little girl who centered my world when nothing else felt right,
a little spirit whose existence is eternally intertwined with mine,
but, my girl has grown up to hold her standards anywhere but high…

most parents are worried about colleges and hot-boxed minivans,
my motherly fears are so vast and sincere, it has hijacked who I am,
after the few days we get for her birthday and high school graduation,
and to wrap it up – I have to leave there without her once again…

to have a daughter who calls you “Mama”,
and she brags about how young I am to her friends,
the absent parent, ‘Orphan Annie’ over-glorifications,
if she only knew how hard I’ve fought to stand in line and fall in…

things have gone so horribly wrong since they broke our family,
they’ve pushed her further and further so inconspicuously,
built a framework in her state of mind that disregarded me,
it’s not the eighteenth birthday party I’ve been imagining…

Rips, Tears and Lullabies

Look at us, there, sitting pretty – all smiles;

photo after photo, flipping through untruth;

the blurry colors in the background,

have fuzzed the edges around me and you.

So much time tossed away seeking the simple;

something I shouldn’t have to choke free from you;

no matter what I want to believe or deny –

I can’t ignore the stabbing in my womb.

You’ve made your decisions, just like I made my own;

Back when life was a highway and my lead foot was down,

When the words between your mouth and mine

might have held meaning as they hung around.

Believe me when I howl at the waxen, pock-marked Lady –

That my intentions only run pure for yours,

That the scars on my skin can only barely begin

To ever describe the horrors.

I’m following tiny footprints down the spiral towards the drain;

In such a disillusioned, unwilling mind frame,

Piles and piles of lies and goodbyes, rips and tears and lullabies;

My teardrops obscure my perceptions abroad,

In a room full of people who only seem to smile or nod;

The fakeness: tangible, as the bills in a fold,

Tucked away, out of sight in a tomb of fool’s gold.

Schrödinger

Oneness, stillness…likeness, I’m safe among my own;

no more waiting or starving or searching

no more missing what’s gone.

Core…hollowed out like the belly of a tree;

no longer able or stable or memorable

no more of YOU inside of me.

Failure, nightmares – the pliable fabric of time;

Nobody has a grip quite as tight, quite so right

as yours when you choked the life away from mine.

Tired and weary – wired and teary;

tick-tick-tock, says the fucking clock

And I can’t see or think very clearly.