“Dear girl, you began as a liquid.
Your mother could not unthink you.”
-- Paula McLain, “Mercy”

She drinks to get drunk
to lose herself in my stone walls.
Her voice echoes in my head
while I tell her –
Stop trying.
Oh mother, stop resisting the phases of the moon.

She writes my future on the steamy shower doors
which I smear my face across, mumbling,
Who are you if you are not
me mixed with hospital gowns
and nineteen Xanax?

She cannot handle herself while intoxicated.
She needs an arm to help her walk. She gets bleary-
eyed and soul-conscious.
In her blurred mind, our house is the castle
she never built. I am a braided maiden
stuck in a tower.
She unlocks my door and drinks
the vile beside my bed.
I love you, she says,
I think about you day and night
but will not turn inside-out
to release you.

11/25/2004

Author's Note: again, OLD poem

Posted on 11/25/2004
Copyright © 2024 Lisa Marie Brodsky