Absolve yourself clean
of your rose-colored shroud
and see I am merely lamb ripe
for your slaughter,
not your long prayed
after prodigal daughter.
Your deep-seeded lust
for control pools
in the corners of your lips,
spilling from your parable fantasies.
Early morning prayers that I will reject
my true identity and return home
to the fold, cry out Mommy
hold me, and revert
to the ways things were.
But I have taken sharpened cross
to the image of what we were,
crucified pain soaked
memories with my teeth,
and finally come to a place
of loving my life
and even more: loving me.
Why would you ever want
to take that away from me?
The way things were – to wish
that upon me knowing how endlessly
my self-loathing poured,
how many pieces I was shattered
into, how many times I searched
for the scripture of death
– does that really sound like an unconditional
mother to return me to that tomb?
Afraid of the reflection
you will see, you turn your gaze
to me and outstretch your thorn
crowned finger towards me. Blame lacerating
me for the pain, the space, the lonely
tether buried inside you since before
I was born – the swollen scars
across your waist once angel-kissed
skin was carved from womb.
I never asked for this, you thrust
it upon me with your own desire
to mother control over yet another
innocent soul. You sermon a good show
to the masses but I can see your split tongue
through the disillusion of your poisoned
smile as you claim me as apple
stumbled far from the tree.
But I am not more apple than I am fruit
rot from twisted vine,
torment filled weeds asserting
their desire over strong rooted
paternal branches. I will saw
the umbilical bond between us
with my own sharpened rib
to be free of the bone crushing weight
of the way you see me. You
can say the only truth that matters
is your love for me, but what love
can exist when your devotion
forwards a faith draws priority
over your own flesh and blood weeping
before your feet? Hands withdrawn to prayer
as holy child cries out to simply be embraced
by the body she once called home.
The pain pulsing through your wrists
is only a drop in the bucket of tears
from a daughter cutting herself orphan
from a mother she wishes
could see the meat of the meal – no distraction
of sacramental wine or flesh torn
bread – see child raw and ragged.
See blue eyes desperate to show the broken
is not within her to be fixed
but within the mother-daughter tie bleeding
between their chests. Bond tattered
through years of conditional guilt,
unhealed wounds, and gaslit hymnals
sworn through telephone lines. Time
has tipped the scales as I reach the end
of my Samson rope, cutting myself loose
as I free-fall into the promise of a future
unburdened by your prayers
for me. I will not return home
as long as home is not a welcoming
place, safe for me and my family.
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