“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 the paisley sofas
scattered about the house.

All arms and fingers,
she runs after me,
tickling, always a child,
never the crone.

Stop trying, I mutter. Stop resisting the phases of the moon.

She writes my future on 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?

In her blurred mind, our house
is the castle she never built.
I am the braided maiden
asleep in the 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.

02/05/2005

Posted on 02/05/2005
Copyright © 2024 Lisa Marie Brodsky