How many re-runs until you tire from watching?
The trees are not wrong,
For shedding leaves or turning charcoal after bushfires blaze
Floods and flowers are not wrong,
Nor wasp stings, moon rises or cotton candy skies
Therefore I cannot be wrong
But your man says I’m wrong so you act like I’m wrong.
How can your only creation be wrong?
Because he’s a child of the 50s and his mother never said she loved him?
Who didn’t love you?
“But I do love you,” you say
To make things better but it only makes things harder
I watch you mouth those words as you snuggle closer
to him
Can’t you see?
I cannot play this role for you
Not daughter,
nor child,
nor cure for your loneliness when he stays out late
then comes home drunk.
I see you,
shackling the un-lived life inside with your suffering.
This is no game of tag
So please
stop trying to pass it on.
I do not owe you for making me,
yet you twist the plot and play as though I do.
Do you know you do this?
I wonder,
but not for too long for too of anything is toxic
Like your need
to keep repeating the second act
crack for insecurity,
but this habit’s not mine to kick
and I yearn to venture into the third
Here I am,
Same hair,
same eyes
same calves
But to your chagrin
I aint no mini mama
Just an anomaly
made from light and lexicon
That you judge and shame
“Don’t you use your big words with me!” You say.
And for the umpteenth time
my truth goes unseen,
Fragmented,
it slithers to the bottom of my shadow sack
A ball and chain of ailments it’s caused you
But your pain is yours
and it’s not my fault
Not your headaches
Backaches
Heart aches
All aches.
“I cannot even look at you, you remind me of your father!” You say.
My sensitive, little, heart
a mosaic of cuts
Dripping blood
stains my sleeve;
irking us both like a tap in need of its washer tightened.
Do heartstrings mend?
I’ve carried your guilt,
poor choices,
burdens
and grief
since before my first breath.
How many generations of crosses do you choose to bear?
In a codependent fit of rage
my makers stained my home’s walls
with hate
with pain
as I eavesdropped from the corridor
With three-year-old arms
hugging knees in tight,
a little voice whispered:
this bullshit, family re-run stops with me.