I. i wish you’d stop apologizing for me. i’m sick of feeling like i was born an apology.

II. i know you’d never intentionally hurt me. but you have, you do, and you will.

III. i know you have the rare gift of seeing the angels inside of us, and that your first instinct is to hold those angels close and shelter them. but you need to let us go. you need to give us room to be individuals who experience pain and make mistakes.

IV. i know i have, do, and will hurt you, too. i’m sorry.

V. i learned a while ago that the less i told you i loved you, the less you’d yell at me. so i stopped saying it.

VI. i love you.

VII. sometimes i hear your stubbornness in my own voice and fear i will grow to sound just like you. it took me a while to find my own voice, but it’s here, and i’m learning to be loud.

VIII. i used to put my headphones on, hang my neck off the edge of my bed, let the tears roll up my head and wish i had a different mother. i don’t anymore.

IX. thank you for all that you’ve done. thank you for nursing us with chunks of your heart. for continuing to feed us even when you felt like there was none of you left. thank you for loving me even when you didn’t want to. thank you for emptying yourself so we could crawl inside. thank you for never giving up. thank you for somehow finding the light within us and reflecting it back at us when all we felt was darkness. thank you for molding me into who i am today.

a letter to my mother // a.s.m

well-water eyes like hands
reach into my chest to
squeeze my beating heart. to
stop the thumping.

well-water eyes like drills
tear holes into soft tissue and
grind teeth down with
sandpaper stares.

when the covers baptize me
in my own sweat,
i am not haunted
by the dead, but by the
living.

in our own
Waterloo, well-water
eyes that drown me in
their dark waves of
self-doubt.

well-water eyes everywhere,
making darkness permanent.
well-water eyes that
i have not yet learned how to escape.

your eyes are dark tunnels to the hell in your soul. i still hear their abuse in my mind, though you are miles away. // a.s.m

Rock-a-Bye, Baby

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.