Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Untouched Thoughts

I sing to the ground, the cold blanket you claim.
Grass and maggot, your halo-- I press my face against your button, pebbles pock my cheek, we are united like the Sunday comfort of couch and soft snoring.

You were tired then, as I am tired now, but were you so tired of living?

I disgrace your name, the one I hold spiritually between my birth and submission to a life I never wanted. But I hear you always wanted the best, worked to death; now I work to forget that I want to die like you. A reunion in memory of someone I forget. You are no longer my mother in times of anger.

An orphan to time, the way it's stripped me of my youth. I am constantly naked, propped as prey, my only place. I knew you just as well as I know myself. Put together by assumption, my consumption the measure of self-worth. There is no one here to keep my place on Earth. I wonder who will speak for me, as I speak for you. Will they put all the wrong words in my dry mouth?

Perhaps I've mistaken just who I thought you were.

The spirals I hide behind-- peer in, peer out. I hear I have your hair, your shape, the same taste in betrayal and self motivation. But I never want to wake, as I remember your morning routine. Wax on, wax off. The last time I saw you, your body was cast in wax. My lips touched your skin, gritty with morgue cosmetics. I couldn't grab your hand, it was cemented to your belly. I could have crawled into your bed then, like I did most nights, you'd lie exhausted, my memories of you always rushed.

Now I have no bed to return to, so I rush to another's. Pinched nerve, something intimate. I wake with contacts slunk in my sockets, the way another can weigh on your conscience. How heavy and dry has my memory of you become?

I wrote you a letter, slipped it into your casket. Now a time capsule, my roots in the Earth, your box. That was the day I buried my innocence. I live like the bitter taste black coffee leaves on the tongue. Caffeine makes me reel in discomfort, my heart beats too fast. No surgeon's hand could force your heart to start up again, for it was their own hand that stopped it. Their neglect, similar to your lover's.

Didn't you know there were others who loved you? Your own creation, a mirror of self. I hide from my reflection, as if by meeting my own eye I'd have to tell you the truth.

I'd forgotten how to love you.

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