Mother, Mother,
you will never know how to abandon me,
although you have tried.

I am your live abortion, that
child you allowed to grow and
feed inside you, that
crawling monster you pushed out and
out, when it was too painful, holding me that close.

I am the doll that was painted ugly,
ugly smile, ugly veins, ugly heart that pumps the sewage of blood
that spurted across your pretty linoleum floor.

I am that thing you owe certain obligations to, your
form of death and taxes, that
reeking shadow you try to shroud beneath more shadows, the
chipped cup you conceal in the cupboard when company comes over.
You hope they’ll never notice. You
put the pretty china out front, and
my ugly doll face, with its chips and cracks and
monsterous smile are folded and
folded into the obscurities.

In your silence, you have become a metaphor for all the
metaphors that slip between my fingers.

I was always one of those stubborn weeds, the obstinate things that
bloom and bloom
between the splintering earth.You
used to wear those dirty gloves, and
you would tell me to pull those weed-flowers, the
things you said were so ugly, the things I
thought were so beautiful.

But these plants, they only grow up and up again,
worming through the cement that tries to smother them.
I was always like that,
I thought.

But even I am destroyed by your paper cut smile, these
tiny wounds more effective than fire or ice.