how does one become a mother
a mother who brings about an aura so dark
you can lose yourself in the deepest corners of its tunnel
if you’re not careful
she is so angry
you can feel her anger echoing in your hollow chest
since childhood you have been coddled,
sheltered, and yelled at until your eardrums start to shake along with the rest of your tiny, frail body
your father never loved her in all of her negative glory
and now you will face the consequences until the day you flee the nest
mother never told you your birth was a transactional ploy,
binding you with contract after contract
until the day you are no longer under her roof.
under her roof, you are loved,
you are cherished,
but only if you give yourself away to her dependency
you had to learn independence by brutal force
mother can’t read these w-2s, or these invoices, or your baby brother’s kindergarten level education— because his autism
will not relent
it is a part of him now
but he will never progress because mother never did
and you don’t know how to be a parent to a disabled child,
you don’t even know how to flick the steel of a lighter fast enough to spark a flame
you’d be a shit mother.
you have to translate every single word in existence into spanish, and don’t become bitter when she questions whether or not you’re correct
mother can’t drive herself to the job that you spent hours and hours desperately trying to help her get
mother can’t not be in control, she is always watching, calculating, and
backseat driving without a license.
does it get better?
spring is here, and you rush at ninety miles an hour in a car with a fucked up transmission
and wheels bound to roll away any day now
your car breaks down and you realize you’d rather sleep on the side of the road—
than mother finding a way to come and save you
because all along
you spent twenty years trying to escape her anger—
you are so tired
you are so spent
nothing will save her and you know it
you’ve accepted that she is darkness itself
she is generational trauma trickling down the thin red bloodlines
she is the one you trained yourself to trust the least to avoid feeling empathy anymore
she made you this way,
she is why you are so damaged.
and that is why you run
that is why you avoid
and that is why you cry
cry yourself to a restless sleep
not even a million fireflies could light
the black filling in the spaces of her chest
it is why you gave up
all those years ago
catching fireflies in countless glass jars
hoping to release them in the spaces of her chest,
maybe their light would make her happy
maybe you could finally make mother proud.