MotherFigure

Writing with her mother's pen, 

pen alert waiting impatient,

mother long since abandoned. 

The girl unravelled mother's lies

before she graduated from diapers. 

Now the verse bleeds from the pen like a hemorrhage;

blue like blood sick of running red

from the wound she knit careful

from years of tribulation on her arm.

sown from the same manic seeds of depravity

capable of insanity in the slightest motion

of limbs and fingers

but never falling victim to the desperation. 

She found the voice her mother never spoke

and screamed it

like a child

unwound from the breast strings

of dependent infant glamour

crawling from cribs at six months

already sick with ambition. 

Ambition her mother made her swallow

like Tylenol for illness.

Three years old and already crying inside.

Six years old and already bruised from life

and her mother's untamed hand. 

She would never fail in the eyes of weakness

nor die in the arms of a priest

who failed to save her. 

nor live her mother's sins

on the smeared chalkboard of existence

banging the brushes, choking on the white dust,

suffocating her already burning, fluid-filled lungs. 

Just as surely as the prison walls

her suitors resurrected.

Never. 

The girl-child found her voice and screamed

like graffiti in a quiet conversation

never bound to perish by the prophecies

she was marked for in funeral garb

at age seven. 

She swore an unbreakable vow to her own soul

never to become the sacrifice of her own hand. 

Mother's footsteps, mother's shoes too small. 

She would never forfeit breathing, crying,

painful reality to escapism,

suicide in her mother's stained manner,

suicide as she was taught.

Young girl crying out inside

deteriorated script falling from her mother's pen

just as old as she

distant like maternal emotions

and the supposed ties to bloodlines

and unfamiliar family. 

Bred like a hostage

in a refugee camp for misfits, 

misplaced in a society

not understanding the ramifications of youth

left to the wills 

and education of its own jealous hand. 

She strove to outweigh the fortunes

and predictions pertaining to her fate.

And now when they see her,

"mother incarnate"

passes their tongues as if spoken in sacrilege. 

She knew her mother once, 

her mother swallowed sleeping pills like lifesavers

savouring the sweet and hazy dream drift

fading reality swan ride in a canoe

down a calm, calm river that they allowed her. 

Now when they see the little girl

they compare her to her mother,

how much the two have grown alike

through coffins and adolescence,

so much alike without influence. 

The whisper in the shadows

about how the little girl too will someday be driven

to that dark, dark, earth-laden place in heaven.