Baring My Soul (poetry)

I'm Listening, Moma

You once told me of your moma and daddy, how your birth mother

had left you on the doorstep of her great uncle’s house with the gift of her name and you

never knew your birth father’s name because she could narrow it down only to nine.

You once told me of the acrid burn of beer on his breath, how your moma

would pour his warm beer through a hole in the porch and laugh

when the dog came staggering from beneath the rotting boards.

You once told me of the bite of the belt into your bare ass, how you

would put on three layers of shorts to cushion his blows and beg

when he heard the hollow snap of the belt and stripped the shorts from you.

You once told me of the dirty angry hands that snaked their way under your dress, how you

couldn’t remember when the defilement had begun because it had always been and you took

an entire bottle of aspirin when you were twelve because you’d heard too much could kill you.

You once told me of his rage before he would throw his plate against the wall, how you

wouldn’t eat because he would take your moma’s food and you couldn’t

eat knowing your moma was going to bed hungry so you both went to bed with twisting bellies.

You once told me of the clenched-fist pounding he gave your moma, how your moma

developed cancer of the left breast because of the tissue damage he’d caused and you rejoiced

when he developed lung cancer on the left side years after your moma had died

and he suffered twelve months though she was taken within six.

I spent years listening to your stories and knowing it must have changed you

and wishing that it had never happened to you and hoping you’d just stop complaining.

I spent years telling you to see a counselor or to read a book or to listen to those who had

lived your life and survived and learned to live a new life without all that baggage.

I spent years thinking your love was conditional because you wouldn’t say

I love you when you were angry and you were often angry with me.

I spent years overhearing you brag about me to other people so that

you would feel inflated and vindicated while I pressed toward perfection.

I spent years trying to understand why you thought it was okay to say

I don’t trust even my own children while we withered in the shadow of a devil’s legacy.

I spent years learning the meaning of my sister’s words when she said

Moma loves us the best she can even while I prayed for those three words

to mean something when they fell from your mouth.

I spent years wondering Why can’t she just get over it and let it go?

and hoping I’d never hear you bitch again about your dad and my dad

and all the wrongs they did and the wrongs you think they did.

I spent years loving you so much I ached with the weight of it.

Here in my beloved city where the Spanish moss seeps from the oaks so even the branches weep

I remember your words and know that I have always been harder on you than

anyone else who’d shared your horrors and I realize it’s never been fair to assume you

capable of loving me as I had been made to love you with an unquenchable

ache to know and have all of you and all you have to give.

Here in my chest where your blood soaks the tiny persistent muscle where we say love resides

I know that the walls have scabbed over and the healing must begin underneath those dark crusty

layers that ache and itch as all deep wounds must before the dried blood is peeled away and

new pink healthy tissue  is revealed below.

Here in the memory of our ever-entwined lives, speak, dear Mother, that I might hear you

and this time I’ll listen to those bleeding walls beneath the repetition of your stories and we

will learn together how to weep like moss and peel the scabs away so that our wounds might

bleed and dry to an itchy, achy shell until our healing is complete.