My Family Is A Compilation Of Unhealed Truths And Disintegrating Hearts

My family is a compilation of unhealed truths and disintegrating hearts

Infection is setting in but we are all too proud to ask for help

We do not know how to say:

I cannot fix this one,

this time

it is not simply my refusal to

This time

I could not stitch this back together

Even if I tried

But we are more than willing to gripe about the pain

To say that we are dying without the weight of the fact that the end is coming for us

Will rotting away in the back of the fridge with the oranges I told my mother not to buy

She says it is her money

Tells me to stop worrying about the price of things

When all she has ever taught me is how much life costs at someone else's expense

.

My father says he's sorry

It is the one thing my mother

Never did

He says he's sorry and that he is trying

To change

He says he is getting better

I say

Okay

I try to

Believe him

I try to

Forgive

But I have never been taught how

Never been taught the phonetic difference between

Mercy and forgetting so they become

Synonyms

And remembering a sin

Only committed in the shower

When the water is louder than the sacrilege

And how can I hold him

When I am still mourning the loss of the

Parts of me he shattered

Because he was angry

But even I know

How much easier it is

To hate

Than to

Grieve

.

I remind myself

I have broken things too

I remind myself

I am only

What I have let myself become

I remind myself

I have no one

To blame

But myself

So I blame her

Bathe in doubt

And swallow the bathwater

~ my mother will never be sorry

I know

I will never 

Fill the craters

She left in your heart

And I know

When we are over

I will take nothing of you with me

But pieces of her void 

And you will have nothing to remember me by

But the memory 

Of how I could not love you 

Like she did

I only ever wrote for you after our end

Which meant every poem tasted too much like an overripe obituary on the tongue

But when has guilt ever stopped me from doing something I shouldn't

What has poetry ever done but turn me selfish

Let me repaint everything in shades that complement the tale of my own tragedy

For what is the heartbreak of an artist

If not another poem the world could have done without

How does a poet ever write about

The things that matter

I want to write about

My mother’s notebook

And my sister the dying star

I want to write about the grieving blackhole

And the beauty of supernova unbecoming

I want to write about

The library that swallowed the sun

And burned

And burned

And burned

I want to write about how every book

Has smelt slightly of smoke to me since then

I want to write about forgiveness

I want to write about my unravelling

The things I will never get back

I want to write about the teardrops of time

Filtering through my lashes

I want to write about the end

I want to write about the end

The end

But it is all so

Hopeless

So infinite

I try to write of it

And I sit with the galaxy in the pit of me

And I ache

The words die on my fingertips

The metaphors swell until my throat is

A rose stem

And I lay on the living room floor

Remembering how to breathe

Promise myself

I do not have to write the poem

Promise myself

I never have to write again

And the galaxy consumes itself

And there are no poems

There are no poems

About the things

That matter

~ don't call me a poet

Oh the blood I have shed

Oh the youth I have lost amongst the grief

And for who?

In hopes a river of sorrow,

Or a pathway of scars

Would lead love back

To the hollow parts of me

I carved out

To make room for the forgiveness

I deny myself?

I want to shout at every passing stranger

Every person who thinks they know me now

Do you know

That I was soft once?

That I had long hair and

A small body

And a heart that could have loved you

Do you know that

I could have loved you

Once

I wait for someone to tell me

That I’ve changed

But they do not

And I mourn for the loss of me alone

She will never get to fall in love

When I do, it will not be the same

When it ends it will be an Antarctic winter

Perpetual darkness

Night amongst night

It will be a small dead star long dead

The ones that fade forgotten

In the oblivion of space

She would have done so much better

Her heartbreak would have been spectacular

Would have been Tsunami and supernova

It would have been beautiful destruction and art

It would have been art

It would have birthed revolutions even in her misery

It would have meant something

And even in the absence

Of condolences

I know she did exist