it is always
mitigation with you,
always putting out fires but
never trying to prevent them
letting the sagebrush grow
just enough that you can
consume it again

but i thought you were the adult
here

i thought being an adult meant
knowing how to love
like really
love without hurting
each other

you yell at me from across
the table &
even in the dim light
i know there are eyes
on us

& in silence i stare at
you & marvel
that of all the conceptions
occurring in the year of 1994,
of all the uteruses &
fetuses to inhabit those uteruses
& consciousnesses to inhabit those fetuses
God decided to give me
to you

it hurts too much to think
there was no method to this

again, you apologize
& allow the act in itself
to forgive you

you snore heavily in the car
as i drive us home.
while you dream i wonder
when i will finally say
it’s okay

a.s.m

Rock-a-Bye, Baby

wingedpiglets:

Nobody warned you
that once I left
the warm walls of your womb,
I would be your sacrifice
to this world;
that I was no longer yours to control.
I was destined to move
with the mountains, to walk
barefoot on the soil and let the soles
of my feet close all gaps between me
and the universe.

And yet you fight—loudly, violently, teeth bared—
to tell the cosmos I am yours.
My first unsteady steps, the first utterances
to tumble from my mouth, my every
achievement and failure
belong to you.
If you cannot have them, no one can,
not even me.

And so you destroy
me
slowly; blindly tearing me apart,
consuming me until
I am once again
completely, undoubtedly, a part
of you.

you’d heard the phrase “to love is to suffer” so you weren’t exactly surprised when the first time you saw his eyes you had stained the sheets red. but you had been so ready to cradle him in your arms and feel his beating heart that you ignored it.

twenty two years later you’re looking through his desk drawers while he’s out; not quite sure what you’re looking for, but knowing there must be a reason his eyes have looked so golden lately. there must be a reason he’s out so damn much.

when you hear the news, all you can think of is his heart, once so small and fragile. that heart that used to beat within your own body is now beating arrhythmically to the sound of train tracks on his arms. and you remember ‘to love is to suffer,’ yet you had never thought it would consume you so much.

you never knew that loving him would mean he would suffer, too. that often you’d hug him so hard, you’d leave a bruise. or that you’d love him so much, sometimes you’d try to save him from being himself.

to love is to suffer (Heroin, Pt. III) // a.s.m

my biggest fear growing up was that i would become like you. there were always so many unanswered questions haunting your eyes. there was always something fragile– even when you yelled– the cracks in your voice made you seem so breakable.

like a flattened beer can on the street, life has run you over so many times that the solid roads in your eyes are turning to mud. you’ve been here before and you know there is only one way it can end. you’ve already lived this life once over and you know how you die. you’re too damn tired to prevent yourself from doing it again.

i’d only ever seen life as an assembly line of inheritance, where every daughter becomes the mother she said she’d never be. now i’ve looked myself in the eye and seen only green: only life, only potential for growth.

i am not made of the same eroding roads as you. i am green grass grown in dark fertile soils. i am soft earth, permeable earth, the earth that recycles itself. i dig my roots deep in the soil, and nothing can uproot me. i shout the depths of my heart into the stars at night and my meditations hum in the rise of the sun.

i find my strength in the soil.
i discover my voice within the wind.
my passion burns with fire. i gain
perspective from monstrous oceans.
i was born from the womb of this planet.

i could not be you, even if i tried.

i’m not so scared of being like you anymore // a.s.m

a three thousand square foot
barbie dream mansion in
greenwich, connecticut.
a family of four and a dog
you didn’t want but have
grown to love.
a box of a
nuclear family sold
on shelves everywhere.

but this wasn’t supposed to be
you. you were supposed to be
on the Saturn V. you were supposed to
get out of this place. this world
was never big enough for you,
and yet somehow it has boxed you in–
as square as the
crusts you cut
off their sandwiches before they run
to the morning bus– a line
as straight as the knife
you cut it with, a knife too dull
to cut through to the parts of yourself that
you try not to think about
when you close your eyes
next to him every night.

there are still some nights where
you fall asleep on the couch
with the t.v. on and the remote
on your belly, and you let go
and accidentally dream of the moon.

sometimes she dreams of the moon // a.s.m

Mother

every day we walk on
your back.
we stick needles in
your spine and fill
your lungs with our smoke.
we look you in the eye while
we close our hands around your neck.

every day you
love us, cleaning our spills
to cradle us again.
we are fleas, but
you love us even when we bite.

you keep trying to grow.
we keep trying to
cut you down.