Mother

Some nights I am the poem,
I am the lines broken in rhythm,
I am the song spoken someone hears,
I, here, right here, bowl over,  
in a vessel of my own historic ache,
and I wear in red,
I wear it through in gold,  
it drips from me in ounces
until the floor is a wonderland tsunami -
and I acknowledge the ways I rung
myself and rung her out again,
version on version to better suit
the version I wanted to see of you,
that's how I loved you,
that's how I know love's name,
as a chameleon,
who paints their shade upon my face
so as not to see
the cold blood.
I took quetiapine for you,
I looked at myself in a mirror  
in a hall
and I rewrote what was happening to me,
what you did,
how you cut me open and plucked
metaphorical worms,
how you  
curled my insides under themselves,
dragged by their hair,
naked and babe like,
how you
would set the house scented in green,
how I  
never knew which you I'd receive,
how I never knew
if I got sick,
if there was food
if you could do
a single thing to help me
depending on your mood
but I remembered Mum
I remembered to leave the grass outside,
even now,
even now  
the idea of that being you,
I shrink it,  
excuse it,  
make it manageable and fathomable,
that you were just a child,
that you were a victim,
that he took what was pure from you
long before I came along,
but you let them medicate me,
you let therapists think it was in my head,
you isolated and abused me and,
and I wanted  
to not exist,
I thought that was my choice
when in fact my essence had been swallowed,
hidden,
told to be quiet,
told to stay silent.
I remember the valium Mum,
the house parties full with drugs,
I remember knowing how to roll before I was a teen,
I remember being asked to use tools on you,
to cut you open,  
to watch you bleed,
I remember being spoken to in front of my friends about harm
as if I was the only one who led me to a world
of tissues and alcohol wipes and bandages,
I remember being gaslit.
Some nights I am the poem,
and on those nights I never know
if I'll write another word.