19 years ago
The doctors said I was going into distress
Even before I left my mother’s body.
Because I knew her hands weren’t going to keep me safe.
I look into the mirror
And I see a physical manifestation,
My mother birthed her depression.
Here I am.
My mother birthed her lack of self-worth, and the inability to make her own mother happy,
Here I am.
At age 13
Outside Homerton station,
My mother told me I was selfish.
Selfish for being scared, that she would choose her boyfriend, over me.
Her boyfriend, was going to make her, happy.
I was not her child
I was an obstacle.
She grabbed me by the shoulders,
She shook me back and forth
As if she could shake
The key to her solutions from my being.
Six years later there still is no key,
I am just my tears
I am scars on my body
I am left with mental health diagnoses
Because
Still I am not the key.
And no matter how hard I try
I can’t shake the pain in my back,
The memories
of being told I should never talk back,
And if I worked hard enough I would never have to look back,
The smell of rum on her breathe
And the fatigue of my hypervigilance,
Listening to her move around the house,
Waiting for when she was going to need me
But who was going to rescue me?
