excuse me

politely whispered
attracts no attention
if only you could here my plea
if only you could see me

t.v. blaring in twilight hours
will not cleanse
a paper cup filled with your life
is my baptism
bathe me with your soul's tongue
purge my thoughts with your darkened words
pure knowledge breeds
pure thought
touch my head and see with my eyes
feel the walls close in around you
my closet of bland white walls
can't bind you as it does me
for you the room expands
taking in the moon's glowing kiss
casting shadows to caress your loneliness
as my blanched room burns my eyes
the stark white leaving me cold and hard
my head spins
slamming into the concrete forgiveness

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Skittles and Starburst

My grandpa Carver was the man who adopted my mother at four days old in the parking lot of the hospital. He died when I was seven. He had more influence on me than all the other grandparents put together.

I know very few stories of his young life, as he was an exceedingly proud man. The kind of man who didn’t believe that your past bears any relevance on your present and your future was completely your making. This may not be true, but it is how I see him. What I do know is that at very young age, my grandpa’s mother left him. Of course it was his father she was really leaving, but all the same I see it the way I can imagine grandpa seeing it. She may have been running away from her husband, but it was her children, my grandpa and his brother, that she left. His father remarried I’m not sure how long after. This is the woman who perpetrated more pain on my grandpa than anyone else in his life, maybe even his own mother. Now I don’t know a lot of stories about her, but I remember very clearly the feelings about her. The one story I know is that when she would invite people over to dinner at the house she would lock my grandpa in the barn so he wouldn’t embarrass her. She used to beat him, badly I think. And if you know anything about my grandfather’s generation you know that a man never hits a woman, no matter what she can do to him, he can’t raise a finger. She made my grandpa powerless, again and again, in a time when being a man meant being powerful.
I don’t really know how it plays into the drama, but I do know that my grandpa’s only brother, the only other person who survived this childhood, killed himself as an adult. Granted he had some more significant issues. It was almost never talked about, but my mother told me some years ago that grandpa’s brother never matured. She said that puberty and its blessings never came for him. He grew into adulthood with the same equipment he was born with. Given the little I know of his stepmother and mother and father, there was no chance for this man to come to terms with this illness. His manhood both physically and emotionally never had a chance. When he killed himself he left my grandpa alone, both with his childhood and with his family legacy.
Years pass, as they tend to, and grandpa, perhaps beginning the long line of those who survive, survived. He went to war, got married, had a daughter, and worked, a lot. Now I have seen many a story of the old guy sitting in his chair trying to get somebody to listen to his stories about what it was like to live through the Great War. This was not the case with grandpa. He never mentioned it, ever. I have no idea what he did, where he fought, what it was like. At his funeral I saw that he had some medals. Apparently he did something somewhere that deserved a medal. But he never told me.
I’m not sure when he married my grandmother or how they met. I never heard any story of a great love that lasted over time and space to bring them together after the war. I used to see pictures of them together when they were young. Him in his uniform and her feet below him in a blue dress. He was huge and she was so small. And that’s how I saw them. He was huge and she was so small. They were divorced long before I was born, and I remember as a child not even being able to connect them. I knew they had been married and that he was dad and she was mom to my mother, but I couldn’t see a connection. I don’t know if I had the child like vision, you know the way that they can see things that others can’t. But they were never intended to be together, I think. I want to know what it was that drew them together, what need they filled in each other for even the small amount of time they were together, but I suppose that will never happen.
Anyway, the two of them being unable to have children stood in a hospital parking lot and bought a baby. There was speculation as to whether he or she was the problem in the conception. My mother has eluded to the idea that it may have been him. What a great disappointment to man whom was made to feel small and unmanly since childhood. Under the circumstances I can see why it would be difficult for him to remain married to a woman who, for her own reasons, did not like to have sex. That just put too much weight on his already fragile masculinity, I think.
It’s almost funny for me to stand back from this analysis of my grandpa and hold this image at the same time as the image I remember of him. You see my grandpa was a gargantuan man in every sense to me. He was more than six and a half feet tall and well over three hundred pounds. He died when I was seven so I still remember that man as a seven-year-old. Before he retired he was a glazier. He put windows in buildings, and he loved his work. I always saw him in my mind on some huge latter holding enormous sheets of glass against the side of a building, stories above the sidewalk. He was the epitome of a manly man in my eyes. He was a champion bowler, and truth or not I believe the stories that he could bowl a three hundred any time. After his funeral we took his trophies and his bowling ball home with us. I couldn’t lift that ball, even with two hands, until well into my teen years.
Slim, that was my grandpa’s nickname, remarried when my mother was a teenager. His wife, Gloria, was a rather hardened woman by the time I met her. But apparently, despite all the problems that arose in the home, this was the most loving relationship, the happiest he ever got to be. But she and my mother never got along and Gloria’s three children brought their own baggage as did Gloria and her ex-husband. I am not sure there was a day in my grandpa’s life that wasn’t plagued by some familial drama, if not tragedy. He was always being pulled from one woman in his life to another, and they all pulled fiercely, some physically paining him and some emotionally tearing him.
He adored my mother, no matter how many times she disappointed him. In fact he adored every woman in his life. It is difficult to explain how a seven-year-old sees a grown man’s adoration, but it was so very evident. It wasn’t just that he loved his wife and daughter and two stepdaughters, he adored them separately, each for who they were. With each he was different man. He became a complement to them in his adoration of them. With my grandmother, who was stern, he was masculine and soft. He ate her green spaghetti. No one else would. He would laugh at her dramatics and he would touch her, almost imperceptibly, when he knew she was insecure about something. With my mother he was the perfect daddy. He bailed her out of every mistake. He saved her from every foe. When she came home from the army at 18, not even completing boot camp, and told him she was pregnant out of wedlock, he wouldn’t speak to her. Now I know to some people that sounds like a lack of support, but to me, I know that he was devastated that his baby girl had ruined her life. My mother might argue this point, but I think he couldn’t speak to her because he had always put her on a pedestal. She was perfect to him. And now he was faced with the very real image of my mother. He didn’t want to see it, not just yet. But when that baby, my sister, came along, my grandpa found a whole new level to his ability to adore.
My mother did not have a father to give my sister in the beginning, so my grandpa was her first and strongest daddy figure. I was always a little jealous of this. He was such a perfect daddy. And she had him first. There was something very special about the way they were together. I can remember the way she would look at him. I don’t think there are words enough to explain the way she looked at him. Before I and before my father, before either of us entered the picture, they had a life there in San Diego. Grandpa, and my mom and my sister. I don’t know where or how they lived or if they lived together or close. I never asked. I think I was afraid to find out that they had been happy before me. But even though, I picture them as happy.
Somewhere along this line my parents married and a year or so later I was born. This is where the story begins, my story, mine and grandpa’s.
My grandpa lived in a triple wide trailer on the top of a big hill or a small mountain, I’m not sure which. And all around this hill mountain was a canyon. We’re talking real wilderness. Even his driveway was a feat to mount, especially in the winter with the snow. My dad once had to drive the car up the road backwards because of the rear wheel drive could only make it up the drive that way. Grandpa had a tractor that he used to plow the drive. He let me ride with him. I have a picture of it. Him sitting in his plaid shirt on this enormous tractor, and my father and I perched up on the side of the machine. Small as we were in comparison to the machine the same we were to grandpa.
He would park the tractor in the shed. It wasn’t really a shed though. It was actually bigger than the house. But with a man like Grandpa, he had to have a place for all his tools. And he had tons. I remember walking through the shed just amazed by the array of blades and cords and things I can’t even describe except that they seemed to me to be the tools of all those burly men that are in the enchanted forests that save the princess when she gets lost. And that’s what I imagined my grandpa did in his spare time; he went trampsing through the forest looking for lost princesses to save. Well that would be in the time that was left over after picking blackberries from the driveway and making jam, and then of course after All My Children was over. He loved All My Children. I watched with him sometimes. I like to think that I acquired my fondness for television drama from him. We would sit in his lazy boy. I curled up in his arm. I have a picture of this too. He’s laid back with his feet up and I am lying in the crook of his arm barely stretching from palm to elbow. I look like an infant compared to him, but I wasn’t. I was about five.
He kept the neighborhood cats fed. Now imagine the neighborhood cats that lived in the canyon. I think he said he knew of about three hundred. Of course we didn’t have relationships with all of them. In fact the rest of us had relationships with almost none of them. There was Mama Smokey who was the mother of most of the canyon cats. She was grandpa’s cat. She would bring her newest litter to him. She’d let him pet her and the kittens. She tolerated the rest of us, barely. I could only pet her if grandpa was there petting her too. It always made me feel special sitting out on the front porch with these wild cats and my grandpa and I feeding them out of our hands. I was magical then. I could tame the wild animals then. As long as grandpa was there. Sometimes deer would come into the front yard and grandpa would watch them with this really satisfied smile. I imagined I could talk to them in my head. I think grandpa did.
He had one of those above ground pools, a circluar one. It had little white spider eggs all around the rim. They scared me and intrigued me. Grandpa would just pick them up. I always imagined all these spiders coming out of them onto his hand, but they never did.
There was this couple that lived on the other side of the canyon from grandpa and Gloria. They were Tip and Marcy. Tip was grandpa’s best friend. Whenever grandpa wanted to talk to Tip or if Tip wanted to talk to grandpa they would just go to the edge of the canyon and yell, “TIP.” And Tip would yell back, "YEAH SLIM?" I don’t think I ever saw grandpa use the phone. Guess he didn’t need one.
Tip and Marcy had two granddaughters, too. Both a little older than me. One of them was named Pebbles. I don’t remember the other, but who would if it wasn’t as interesting as Pebbles. She was cool, I remember. That last summer they came to stay with Tip and Marcy for a while at the same time that we were staying with grandpa. My mom and her boyfriend were living in a singlewide trailer at the park in town, but much of the time my sister and I were at Grandpa’s. We played hide and seek that summer with the girls from across the canyon. Now I was small for seven and the other girls were older than me. And grandpa being the hero that he was always helped me make up the difference when we played hide and seek. We would play in the house. Someone would go off and count and the other two girls would run off giggling to find the perfect hiding spot and I would just sort of stand there until they left. Then I would crook my neck way back and look up at grandpa and with a smile and a nod he would pick me up one handed and put me some where. And he was good. He never put my behind the door or the couch. No, uh uh. Grandpa put me in the dryer, or in the top cabinet in the kitchen that was so high Gloria didn’t put anything in it because she couldn’t reach it. And then he would just stand around waiting for the girls to come looking for me. He never gave me up, and they never found me. Eventually he would come to pull me out of whatever place he’d stuck me and we would laugh.
When we weren’t playing or swimming with Pebbles and her sister that summer, grandpa would take me and my sister in the big truck to town. We would go into the country grocery. I would sit in the cart and April would hang onto the side of it. We would go up and down the isles and we wouldn’t ask for anything. We had been taught by mom not to. But we would stare longingly at the sugary cereals and the candy isles. All the stuff mom never bought for us. He wouldn’t say anything he would just slow down in the candy isle. Getting slower and slower. April and I would be just about to pop in our silent hoping. And he would stop…right in front of the Starburst and Skittles. And I don’t mean the small bags. Nope he never skimped. He would reach out and get the big bag. One of each. He’d hand them straight to us. He would rip them open for us and let us eat them right there in the store. And none of this one piece for each hand nonsense that grandma did. No he would tell us we had to eat it all, all before we got home, so that Gloria wouldn’t know. And we did. We would all be sick and hands sticky and colored all over with a rainbow of fruit flavors. And so happy. We had that little secret, just the three of us. April and I talk about it every once in a while. And we still giggle like little girls.
As grandparents tend to, Grandpa and Gloria (who by the way we did always call grandma, though now it doesn’t feel right) went to bed early, real early, so that even I at seven was up later. April and I would watch tv and then go to bed in the room that we shared just off the dining room. And as grandparents tend to, Grandpa and Gloria would get up early. I remember waking every morning to the sound of shuffling cards. They would be up before dawn shuffling and playing gin or canasta or some such grown up game that I wouldn’t learn for many years, but have always associated with them even as I play them now. He did teach me to shuffle though. And he showed me the fancy way he did it with the bridge and all. Throughout my life when ever somebody has marveled at my shuffling skills, and yes there has been many a time, I tell them my grandpa taught me. When it came to actually playing cards, we all sat up late into the night, like 8 or 9, well past their bedtime and played Uno. I loved Uno. It was the one game we could all play where I wasn’t left behind from the start. Or maybe he just made it that way. Either way I was a part of it. I was a part of the tradition of playing cards with grandpa.
One night that summer, April and I were up watching TV and the grandparents had gone to bed quite some time before when we noticed a bird flying around inside the house. It was flying circles around the living room where we were. I remember the two of us sitting there debating whether or not to wake them up to tell them that there was a bird in the house. We let it go for quite sometime. Finally we figured we had to wake them for the poor bird’s sake. So we tip toed all the way across the house and squeaked into their bedroom. We woke grandpa as gently as we could and told him there was a bird in the living room. He rolled out of bed and wasn’t even upset. Gloria got up too and we all walked out to the living room and I was so excited. There was a bird in the house and it was late at night and he wasn’t mad. It was an adventure. And then grandpa turned to Gloria and told her to take us in the bedroom and close the door. She did it without asking questions and we did too. We went in our bed room and she left us there for a few minutes in which time we were mortified. What was going on? We didn’t know but we had very active imaginations and had seen way too many scary movies. Gloria rushed in a minute later and made sure that nothing followed her in and she kept patting her head. She told us. It wasn’t a bird. It was a bat. Yeah, a blood sucking bat was loose on us for lord knows how long until we got grandpa to save us from having our blood sucked out of our heads by the devil creature. Yeah I know in hindsight it probably wasn’t a vampire bat, but I told you about all the movies and I was seven how was I supposed to know. Anyway after thanking our lucky stars that it hadn’t struck at us with its deadly fangs we sat into our silent worrying about the archaic battle happening in the living room between man and fierce beast. We heard sounds for a while like swatting and a couple of finely chosen words from grandpa before we heard it. The toilet flushed. Seconds later grandpa opened the bedroom door and said it was OK to come out. What had happened? Well as was his way, he didn’t go into details. But the gist was he had caught the bat and flushed it down the toilet. I can’t tell you how freaked out I was every time I ever had to use that toilet again for the rest of my days. At night, I wouldn’t even go. I would hold it, painful as it may have been, for hours until daylight came and then I still peed with one cheek up and my head bent over looking to see if that darnn bat was going to come flying up out of the toilet and bite me on my butt. Why was it easier to go in the daylight? Well, the chances were much less that a night creature was going to revive itself from the dead and fly out of the toilet when it was daylight. Don’t you think?
At the end of the summer, my mom took us back to San Diego. Grandpa died not long after. My mother explained to me that he had gone to heaven. That he was up there right now putting the windows in my mansion in heaven and when it was done, he would be waiting there for me when I got there. That one thing may have been the single best thing my mother ever did for me.
I don’t remember what time of year it was, but I remember it was beautiful and sunny up on the mountain hill when we went back up there. Gloria and mom made April and I wear our old matching Easter dresses to the funeral. They were pink with ruffles. Really atrocious. I hadn’t ever been to a funeral before, but I knew you were supposed to wear black. What would grandpa think if we came to his funeral in frilly pink dresses? I was mortified. But of course I didn’t say anything. The service was outside and he was in an open casket. We sat in folding chairs in the grass in our ugly pink dresses and listened to the pastor talk. One of Gloria’s daughters was in the military and she helped fold the flag. She cried the whole time. I had never seen someone in a uniform cry before. Some how it made it feel…sadder. Gloria asked us if we wanted to go kiss him goodbye. I nearly died. I don’t know if I did. There is sort of a hole in my memory there, but I don’t think I did. It may have been the only time in my young life that I had exerted my will…by shaking my head violently and sitting down in a thump. Throughout the whole service I kept watching the bees fly around the casket. It was the strangest thing, but I was waiting for him to reach up with that hand folded on his chest and swipe them away. I mean I knew he was dead, but I just kept waiting.
Later that day when all the people came to the house and ate and talked in muted voices, I heard Gloria telling the story over and over again about driving up the driveway after work and finding him laying at the top with the bowl of berries turned over near by. He died suddenly she said, of a heart attack. Sometime later I heard my mother say to someone that he must have known. He had been eating a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon every day for breakfast forever. And he had just been to the doctor a few months before. He had to have known that his cholesterol was dangerously high. She said that he had gotten bored after retiring the year before and that now he had just given up. Now I don’t know if anyone pays attention to the way a child’s mind works, but when a young child hears that the man who loved her most and best in life had just given up on life, that he had nothing to live for, she . . .well, I . . .to me it meant that I wasn’t enough to keep him alive. That he had the choice and had chosen to leave me.
All I have of him now is this faded memory, an old work shirt of his that Gloria gave me to wear as a nightgown the night of the funeral, a battered old baseball cap that is all stretched out to the size of his head and Skittles and Starburst.
I cried over him just a couple of months ago, maybe for the first time. I was telling my therapist about how I knew what love was supposed to feel like. That I have this blurry fairytale picture of being loved with the kind of adoration he looked at me with. But the picture is so fuzzy. I told her, “I don’t have enough of him to make him real, and I need him to be real.”

A Letter to My Mother,

There have been times in my life when I have felt that there were signs in the universe, as if God himself were hinting to me that it might be time to consider it, to consider whether it was time to forgive you. I never have felt it was time, not just yet. I guess I have felt that if I forgave you, once and for all, that would some how lessen what you put me through; that it would give you a message that it was all OK, that it wasn’t that big of a deal. And I know that is just how you would take it, because you want so badly to believe that it wasn’t that bad. But it was, mom, it was that bad.
Not too long ago, one phone call, you said something about that “really awful thing” you had done to me as a child, and I didn’t know what you were talking about. You took that to mean that I didn’t remember. You went on about how if I didn’t remember than you weren’t going to tell me, “because there were some things better left forgotten.” But my first thought was “Which awful thing?” After much prodding on my part I convinced you to tell me which thing it was that you considered '‘the one awful thing.'’ I did remember it, probably better than you.
I was seven and we were living in the little single-wide trailer in Fresno, all four of us. Jay had just put together the bike dad had bought for my birthday. You decided it was time that I learned to ride without training wheels. But you didn’t ask me if I wanted to learn, if I was ready. You never asked me anything.
Were you drinking that day? I don’t remember, but I assume you were. At that time you almost always were. No one else was around. April was probably off flirting with the boys from across the lake. That was the first summer she really got into boys. You probably didn’t know it then. Who knows where Jay was. He was probably off trying to score your next high. I should have known I was in trouble when I realized we were alone. We were almost never alone in those days, and I came to see that as a good thing. When other people were around I could slip under your radar; I could be invisible. I’ve used it in many forms over the years, my invisibility. It has saved me time and again. Then it hurt me time and again.
I couldn’t be invisible when we were alone. I’m not sure anymore how it started, but I know I was afraid. You were going to hold me up and I was going to pedal. You weren’t going to let go, you said. But you did, and I knew you were going to. I instantly put my feet down, probably even before you took your hand from the metal bar of my banana seat. I’ve always been a little overly cautious. I don’t know if it only took that one time for you to get angry with me, or if it happened a couple more times. But I do know you were furious. I’m sure you saw it as some kind of personal affront to you, everything was, still is. You just had no tolerance in those days. You were so angry. You were in a rage. The next part is a bit hazy, as all the beatings have become, but I know you used a belt that time. What I remember next was being curled up on the chair in the front yard crying while you went on raging in the trailer. I had no where to go, no place where I could hide away and be safe while I nursed my wounds. I knew that if I left, if I ran away and found a place just for me that would make things worse. So I sat there, hating you.
Yeah, I remember that day. But why did you pick that one as the ‘one awful thing’ when there were so many? Why not the time you skid the car to a stop in front of me and pulled me off the side walk where I was walking with a friend and beat me in the middle of the street without even stopping to ask why I was late coming home from school. And later when you found out that I was late because the neighbor girl that you had told me never to walk home without had forgotten to pick me up, you didn’t even apologize. You told me that I deserved it because I had lied about going to the bathroom when I had really gone looking for her. So you grounded me for a week to think about what I had done. I sat there for a week thinking about what you had done. But you probably don’t remember that one.
But, you know the truth is mom that I don’t think about those times much anymore. I’ve come to terms with a lot of what my childhood was. As a therapist I’ve heard a lot worse. Though I do remember the day, when sitting in a seminar on mandated reporting and how to identify child abuse, that I realized what you did was abuse, that had anyone seen and called you in, we would have been taken away from you. Did you know that? But still, when I sit here and think about what it is that I have such a hard time forgiving, it isn’t the beatings, it’s what you made me hold for you, the state you made me live in, all day, every day, day after day. I know very well how hard your life was, trust me. You never let us forget about all the abuse you had been put through or any of the terrible circumstances you had been put in or any of the losses that had happened to you. Your life was forged out of pain, too much pain for any one person to bear. And so you made us carry it for you. You let me know of every man that had ever hit you, hurt you, or left you. You told me about every friend that had ever betrayed you, every time your parents had abandoned you, and how many times God had let you down. So many people had failed you so many times, and you couldn’t carry it all. So you gave it to us.
I was six when I realized that I didn’t know where the money came from, only that there was never enough. And not much older when it was my money bailing you out. I was eight when I put my drunken mother to bed for the first time. I knew that there wasn’t a man alive who could be trusted and that no man could love me enough to stay long before my first boyfriend. I figured out really early that the end of the month was always the hardest, not as much due to the bare cabinets, but because the booze and the drug stash was gone. And it was really bad when you were drying the leaves that Jay grew in the kitchen pantry in the oven. I used to get really excited when the thought occurred to you. You were almost fun when you were high.
By the time I left your house I knew that there was no one I would ever be able to depend on, no one to trust. I lived in a constant state of expectation, expecting you to get angry with Jay, with dad, with April, with me, with the cats, with life. It didn’t really matter the impetus; the result was always the same. Your rages were terrifying. I remember clearly, lying in bed at night listening to you and Jay fight. I would stare wide-eyed at the ceiling wondering what each crashing sound was. Was it the bookcase? Was it falling on you? Was that the sound of your bed going up in flames? I never knew what I would find when I woke up; What would be broken; Who would be hurt. There was the time I was the first up to find a big red splash down the wall. You laughed when you told us that Jay had thrown his glass of Slow Gin. It probably never occurred to you that my first thought was that it was blood. But then again, I was never your first thought.
No mom, no woman should ever have to live through what you have lived through. But did you ever think about what a seven-year-old would have to go through in order to carry that for you.
When I was 13 or 14, I was doing the dishes. You came in and complained about the job I was doing. I was never good enough. I made an awfully disrespectful comment; something like, “but I’m doing it exactly the way you taught me.” And you backhanded me. It was hard and you hadn’t hit me in a while. I finished the dishes in silence, though April and some friends were in the room. Then I went to my room. You came up a little while later and did just what you always did. No matter what you had done, you would always come later and say, “I’m sorry, but…” I was supposed to agree with you and hug you, and all would be forgiven. You should have been Catholic with how readily you move on after confession. But on this particular occasion, I decided to respond differently. Maybe I was hoping that would force the story to have a different end. I decided to tell you the truth about how I felt. “I’m not ready to forgive you.” You were furious. You told me that maybe I should just stay in my room then. You stormed out and slammed the door behind you. When I finally had the guts to sneak out of my room, you didn’t speak to me for such a long time. You didn’t even look at me.
I learned to always give you what you wanted; it just made things so much easier in the long run. Though I admit, there were times when I felt it was my job to teach you, to be the one to show you that there was more to the world than the part that revolved around you. But that was just me, again, taking more responsibility for you than you would take for yourself. I did eventually come to see that you weren’t going to learn anything that way and that it wasn’t my job to teach you. You know that I’ve taken a lot of shit over the years of my adult life for the stance I’ve taken with you, from more than just you. Even from April and Dad, who should have know better. I was an awful daughter, never giving you what you needed. I was too cold, too distant, a bitch. Dad said maybe I should’ve been more understanding. I understood all too well. April said I should’ve been softer, more accepting. I accepted far more than I should have. And you wanted me to feel guilty for not being there for you. But I’ve come to the belief that we are given a finite amount of guilt in this lifetime, and you used up mine long ago.
My therapist was the first to tell me that it wasn’t written in stone or in any rule book that I had to have a relationship with my mother. She said you were toxic to me. I was shocked. Thought it felt really good to hear that, and to know that it was my choice to leave, I was not ready to not have a mother. What I had, toxic as it may have been, was better than no mother. Wasn’t it?
I feel as though I may have finally come to terms with the person you are today. You’ve traded in the drugs and liquor for God, (and Vicadin). And after years of battles, you’ve finally started to respond to all the boundaries I set up. You haven’t asked for money in a long time, and you have gotten almost good at keeping me out of your issues with April. You still get upset when I refuse to listen to your problems, but you get over it faster.
In fact, I do remember some happy times as a child, too. But I have to admit that I fight those far more than I have the less than happy times. For much the same reason as I’ve found it difficult to forgive you. If I reminisce in the good times it might negate the bad. It’s like I need to see you, at least the you from back then, as all bad. Any acknowledgment of the good in you would lessen the bad and I need, for some reason, to remember the bad.
But I do remember you taking me to ice cream after I got my shots. I remember what you told me when grandpa died. You said that we may miss him, but that wouldn’t last forever. You said he was putting the windows in my mansion in heaven, and it was going to be beautiful when I met him there. That was maybe the single greatest thing you ever said to me, and it has stuck with me the twenty years since. And there was you and me, singing Cher at the top of our lungs as we sped through the Redwood Forest, bonding as we both escaped the same thing, your mother. No, mom, you weren’t all bad. It’s just that the pain is harder to let go of. Pain defined your life, and that was what I learned from. I needed to separate myself from you in any and all ways that I could in order to make my own definition; one based on the life I was choosing to live. It’s only recently that I have seen how much of that was based in fear, fear of your pain, fear of you, fear of ending up like you.
My single greatest fear in life is of waking up someday and realizing that the last ten years never happened, that I’m still in your house. I usually see the house on Burchell St., the one that was condemned, and we had to go to the corner gas station to use the bathroom. The family of mice living under the sink, Jay drinking on the floor in front of Jeopardy (answering all the questions right of course), you and April fighting bitterly over something. That’s my greatest fear, that I never really made it out.
It wasn’t too long ago that you told me that after all these years you are still waiting for your knight in shining armor to come and rescue you from all the pain that was your past and ride you into your future, made of all the things you have ever dreamed of. And knowing you as I do, he’s got to be rich. You’ve always believed that money would change everything, and that someday you’d get it all, everything that you so rightly deserved. But mom, face it. You’re 50 and maybe this life, the one you’re living right now, is exactly what you deserve. And this life that I’m living right now is exactly what I deserve; it’s exactly what I’ve made it.
I’ve always said that since the year I turned 17 and took control of my life, that every year has gotten better. And it’s mostly true. Sure my life may have just been thrown up in the air, and many of the pieces have yet to fall into their places; and life is hard right now. It’s still better; it’s still getting better.

The thing is that I had started living my life like I was waiting, waiting for the perfect relationship and waiting for the perfect job and waiting for the perfect friends and all the while clinging tightly, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me. I was barely living at all, again. I get sucked into these comfortable, but not quite perfect, expectancies. And then I hold on . . . because things could be better, but they could be so much worse. And then I become sort of paralyzed. What if I make the wrong turn and lose everything?

And then . . . God steps in, and pulls the rug out. Everything falls apart. But I can’t tell you that, or show you how scared I’ve been. Because I’m the successful one; I’m the levelheaded one; I’m the one who has it all figured out. I’m still trying to live up to your expectations. You have always needed one person who could save you; one person who had everything figured out and could pull you out of any mess you had gotten yourself into. First there was grandpa, and then dad, and then you really tried to make Jay be that, though he was always failing you. And then one day, I’m not sure when, it became me. Well I’m sorry to finally disappoint you, mom, but I don’t have it all figured out. In fact, the older I get, the less I know. But there are still a few things that I’m pretty sure of. One of which is that everything happens for a reason, even when I don’t know or pre-approve of the reason. And sometimes you have to lose everything in order to find out that you haven’t really lost anything.
Maybe I needed to write this in order to finish losing everything I never had.
Maybe I can’t forgive you, can’t let go of the pain, because that would mean I would have to finally let go of the mother I never had. I have built my identity around the ‘look how great I am doing despite . . .’ It’s easy never to appear to be a failure when compared against where I came from. My greatest fear is also my excuse for not being more. If I wear the past you made for me as a badge of honor, than being average is quite a triumph. No one will ever ask more of me, because in comparison, I’ve done so much. You are my excuse for being mediocre. If I forgive you and let go of that past, then I have to stand on my own. I’ve always seen myself as independent because I have taken care of myself for so long, but I’ve used you as a chain around my ankle, always halting my growth, weighing on my potential. With all that, how could the expectations of me be all that high? Anything I did would be amazing. And with that, I have been amazing. If I untethered myself from you now, stood on my own without excuse, would I still be amazing? I don’t know who I am without your pain and your past, my past.
You know everyone is going to want a neat little package, with all the strings tied up. But that’s not what’s going to happen here. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing. My strings are all unstrung. But I know that I can’t rely on you to be my shackles anymore. Those signs in the universe, God has finally pulled the rug out once and for all. Whether I fail or succeed is going to be based on this life that I’m living, not where I came from. And it’s time I start living that way.
The reason I have never been able to forgive you mom, as it turns out has nothing to do with you. This time it’s about me. This is my story, and this is my happy little beginning . . .

veiled

i hate the way you lie to me
hate is a strong word
dad says never to say it
but i say
never say never

so i hate the way
you make me want to cry
but I'd rather die
than you see a tear in my eye
but anger is not so
veiled
you can have it
as much as you can take
then a bit more
just to make sure
you remember me
the young one
who as it turns out
is not so naive.

silent bodies, silent voices

thats what i told the children
when i wanted them to stop
"remember
silent bodies, silent voices"
thats what i told myself
and i stopped
i say its for reflection
but if you reflect long enough
you stop seeing
stop feeling

now i feel
and it hurts
years of silent bodies
and silent voices
and now it hangs in my chest
i cant remember what for now
i dont remember any of it
all i know is
it left...this

it all came the day i decided
to stop stopping
stop reflecting
and now my silent voice
chokes my throat
and my silent body
brings violet violence
purple layers are peeled away
and it sounds like
years
silent years.

but tonight i danced solely for you

i did not dress for you
and i did not wear my hair this way for you
but when my skin heard your music
i was no longer dressed
and my hair was not to be worn
it was all of me
naked
bathed in pink light
clothed in melodic curtains

i did not look to find you
you were pulling me
with rhythms
i was beautiful
not because anyone said it
but because you made it

many nights
my body leaves you
and me
but here
i was all with you
and
i danced solely for you