For years, I hated you,
but you were as much my mother as anyone.
You wrapped the chord that yoked me
to childish innocence around my neck,
and when I finally admitted that I couldn't breathe,
I turned to see the corpse of who I had been
lying bloody between your legs.
It was the kind of birth I didn't know how
to be grateful for until later,
when people couldn't hurt me because
I had never trusted them with
the parts of me susceptible to harm.
You put the razor in my hand,
but you made sure that I never
surrendered it to someone else.
Those were the lessons you taught me:
the florid language of betrayal
and the easily breached nature of skin.
Now I think of you being just a stupid girl,
much the same as I was before you made me,
and I wonder if you were ever clay,
slick between someone else's fingers,
formless in their careless hands.
I've never done to anyone else,
what you did to me. I evolved.
I revel in my superiority,
my relative lack of blame.
From this perch I look down on you,
and I feel nothing but pity.

01/22/2013

Posted on 01/22/2013
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