The Color of Bones

My mother, a bleacher of bloodstained
sheets, bleaches my dreams the color of bones,
and feeds me on snakes and dirty slate stones.

She winces each time I walk through the door,
a mere apparition (though we’ve done this before.)

She blinks at the angles of my newly-formed hips
and her voice sounds strangled through
thin pressed lips.
“He did this because he was stressed at work;
if you turn your head
if you concentrate hard
our skeletons will stay buried in our own backyard.”

Oh! See how dust motes stir in my wake
(and mother just Pledged, for Heaven’s sake!)
Don’t pick at your scabs
Don’t stand pigeon-toed
Don’t ask for answers to questions you’ve no right to know.

O, wicked child so much in the way
Nothing but underfoot night and day.
Can’t you see that your visibility
makes mother suspect her accountability?

But others decide the sting of my fate!
The slant of my head and the tread of my feet—
and mother’s bleaching my blood from her snowy white sheets.

Another fine mess for mother to scour
And look at the time! Another lost hour!
She sends me to scrub my stepdad’s back.
Robotically I do as I’m told:
mother look at me! Obedient am I, as good as gold.

(O see her brow pucker
in matronly frustration;
the very sight of me has ruined
her housewifely concentration.)

I’ve gone far away so far from myself
and live on old bones and the most cunning of stealth.
I’ve perfected the art of tip-toeing on my Flintstoned feet . . .

and mother is bleaching my blood from her snowy-white sheets.

1. touching would not even come close to describing what you wrote, poignant maybe, breathtaking, harrowing. the lives we led seem so unreal and now we read of so many others whose lives were as ours was. truly reassuring that we were and are not alone but also depressing.

   peace and blessings

   keepers

   keepers - October 3rd, 2006 at 9:50 am e
2. 

   it’s only legal to murder your offspring before they are born, mother!

   WoW!
   Austin

   Austin of Sundrip Journals - October 4th, 2006 at 7:36 am e

Comments

[marj aka thriver]

It's okay to let your husband rape your daughter...but we'd be having those lily-white sheets! So important! Great poem. This is one of those writings of yours that makes me so damned MAD ...angry for you...about what was done to you.