Mother

Sometimes I can't forgive you.

For leaving me with these people, for releasing me to their wretched, tender care.

I would have been better off with you;

You should have taken me with you.

I lost all the love I had when you died,

Both within me and within the world for me.

2025

love's lament

i do not wish for love

love wishes for me

it tries to coax me into its arms

but i am cold flame made flesh

you cannot burn me


i do not long for love

but love longs for me

oh how it sighs its desire from seductive lips

but i am a river made stone

you cannot divert me


i do not mourn love

love mourns me

it weeps so ardently over my casket

but i am not dead

you cannot kill me

2025

disrespectful

I do not respect authority.

I loathe the very concept.

They have tried to beat it into me;

Tried to leash it to my bones.

I have fought and cut and spit on it.

I have pried it from my very soul.

I refuse to give away to you what I have never owned.

2025

after

they'll never understand the people they were to me;

the way they seemed to me;

the ways they were wretched to me.

in their eyes, they are innocent.

i had good food and nice clothes and a roof to sleep under.

what more could i need?

and sure enough, i was alive.

they kept me alive.

what more could i possibly need but to be alive?

2025

tender loving care

I was drowning,

And rather than pull me out of the water

Or put me out of my misery,

They gave me just enough air to stay alive and told me to be grateful.

They call that waterboarding elsewhere.

They call that torture.

2025