loss stands tall in the room
where my mother falls silent
*
you approach my mother
you approach a dead child
*
my mother’s grief is full of life
*
death is one thing
suicide is another
*
rage directed at thin air
returns unacknowledged
and razor-sharp
to my mother’s heart
*
the faces of women that I’ve studied as a countermeasure
bear the presence of men
and absence of themselves
*
men who needed two bodies to exist
one to exploit
and one to crown king
*
men who felt so small and inexistent
that they bred children
to manifest their superiority
turned themselves into giants
that nobody ever questions
because they’re set in stone
for as long as anyone could remember
*
did I ever say, please, Father, come home
*
I waited
as a child
to lay eyes on the truth
that forced its way home
*
my father’s omitted past
raised me without his knowledge
Croque-Melpomene 