Lost

 My childhood was spent plugging the holes in my father’s soul.

I used my hands to fill in the gaping openings. 

But the blood gushed out of the holes onto my hands. The acidity and bitterness wearing my tools to fix down to a numb. 

 

Without anything to plug the holes in his soul, his words bit away at me. Ripping easily through my weak and fragile skin. Leaving jagged edges and my own wounds. His blood filling me. His pain, my inheritance. 

 

Now I can’t tell the difference between what was once his and what is now mine. It all overflows and the ebb that used to be slow is bursting. Busting away any seams that once held me together. It seems  that this is now the everyday scene. I no longer know what a serene soul looks like or feels like. 

 

Now the acidity and bitterness spills over onto you. My inability to sustain washes over you like a stain. You spend all your time washing away the waves of rage. And my worn down hands, can’t heal that which my father set out to steal and my broken down numb nubs can’t scoop the bloods from those holes set on eroding. So it all falls on you. But what can you do. You stood in front of me and said I do. Were you the fool? Or was I? Thinking that being with me would make us free? Hoping that the jagged edges wouldn’t hurt you. Believing that it could be true to start something new with you.

 

On most days I am numb. On worst days I am mean. I don’t remember the last time I felt joy. I hold onto memories from past years, knowing that at one point, at one time I went to sleep satisfied and soundly and excited for the next day, the next conversation, the next person. Now I wonder if I will sleep. I try to put off waking. As soon as I open my eyes, knowing I have already failed. And will fail again. 

 

I never plugged the holes in my father’s soul. The blood flowed freely out of those wounds and created me. Now I can’t plug the holes in my soul. I just don’t know how to rewrite a story that has been written in red ink over generations. Tattooed on the body and traced over. Used as the mold to create the next one. 

 

 

I would rather not write, if my muse is always moments when we fight. 

 

I left my five year old sister. Then she lived darkness that has marked her. I do not call her. 

            I am an absent sister.

I berated and bullied my middle sister. She sought refuge in a boyfriend. Now I overwhelm and distance myself from her. 

            I am a lacking sister. 

I cannot carry my pain and the pain of my mother. 

            I am a weak daughter. 

I have always hated my father. 

            That one is on him. 

I gave up on my brother. I feel so little for my brother.

            I’m not even a sister. 

I lost friendships with two roommates who knew me in and out. I walked away and never reached out. Neither did they. 

            I am a coward. 

I left a vocation that was everything I was. I have not returned.

            I am ashamed. 

I married a man. Then fought and fought. 

            I don’t know how to find the light again. 

God I don’t know you. And don’t know how to be. I think I hate you too. I think Im done with you. I think you might not be real. I think I was trapped by you. Then it turned sour. But now I don’t know who I am. This was the best part of me. And with you gone, I’m left with the other parts. And those parts are defective. And there is no way out.

            I am stuck.

 

There is too much and too little of me all at once. Too many thoughts, too chatty, too anxious, too stressed. Not aware enough, not in control enough, not patient enough. I walk into rooms and can’t hold a conversation. I feel the awkwardness of the silence. The other person feeling it too. 

 

Bacon

 When you make bacon the smell lingers in the air for the rest of the day. Clinging onto every fabric of clothing, every strand of the rug, becoming the air itself. But when we make love, the love does not linger. The stains on the sheets do not feel like love, they feel like laundry undone. The intimacy of the moment gets swept up by the resentments of the daily. The love is lost before it is done being made. The fear wraps around our bodies tighter than our arms wrap around each other. How is it that the smell of bacon in the air outlasts the love we make?

Garden of Deception

 It's when I feel my satisfaction in my self, it's when I feel confidence in this corner of my life, it's when I am calmly walking - not rushing that the sulfur raindrops of doubt fall. Burning rapidly through the budding seeds of hope. The constrictions start in my chest. My shoulders tighten, and my breath shallows. In the span of minutes the lightness I had just been walking in gives way to the familiar trudge. My brow furrows and my lips tighten. How do you time it so well? How do you make sure that just as the first petal was unfurling, just as it was tasting sun, and just as it was dreaming of grow, just then, at that very moment you come home late, you evade questions, you close off. And the sulfur rain burns holes through the new growth. And the old roots, the rotting roots, the doubting roots, the angry roots do their due diligence of feeding that plant that chokes and stifles and that plant continues to sprout a new leaf.