You will never feel my pain, she says.

A celebration

is gold and pink and big, pretty bows. 

You are

small and weary and too large and too bright;

your makeup is too orange. 

"I can see you," she says. 

And you take that like a sucker punch 

again and again and again

until you are 

40

50

60 

and retelling your daughter 

about what it means to

be a woman.

What it means to celebrate

ourselves

and others. 

From a great distance

I feel safe 

and alone.

I am wrapped in the quilt that my mother made me. 

Not the home I grew up in.

We fashion truths out of the 

sewing needles that you used

to rend your family apart. 

You stole the living room lamps

and there we sat

unlit

yet burning. 

They say that the foundation of a house

determines it's longevity.

What tar paper is covering this 

ancient beast? 

Who traverses the spine of this home? 

When the bows break across your ribcage,

I want you to know:

I was at peace here. 

Toxic masculinity

Give me this:

your prison sentence

is a right of passage. 

Hollow sleep 

and poetry. 

She begs to be seen

while his bones ache and they

watch from the flames,

alight in a grave of "men don't cry."

The power is gone. 

You are bleeding out

while the mud dries. 

Talking about your tattoos in a loud auditorium

They called it gold

this precious object that won them

(what)

self-respect 

and a chance at the eternal. 

She shares pictures;

one wrapped around her neck, 

two across her arm,

the finale... dripping,

melts luxuriously down her calf. 

A claim to life. A stake in flesh. 

Hers. 

This way to pin down the flesh

as if to pin down

life itself. 

 

They called it blind ambition.

When her heart burst through the kitchen shutters and landed on the family dinner table. 

The children laughed. 

And you,

long divorced from your intuition,

rolled your eyes. You swept the ceiling

with your lashes,

a breath caught at the top like hanging

on a rollercoaster

in anticipation of a drop

that never comes. 

I erased the world

to give you everything. 

What a fallacy:

King of nothing. 

Now you hold reign over a pause,

a glance,

an elipsis...

hardly anything

really. 

Soldier of disappointment. 

Praxis of despair. 

I want for you

while you disappear. 

I am building a castle of resentment. 

A pot boiling over. 

My skin a fast flowing river for rage to dance upon. 

In the distance, a heralding call. 

Drum beats. 

She made a vow to return to the ocean 

A Little Mermaid tattoo on her left bicep, adjacent to her heart. 

She loves everyone and 

no one. 

She made a vow.