Written February 2023, Fakarava, French Polynesia
This poem is about the weight of generational hurt, addiction, and what it means to love someone who keeps hurting and keeps hurting you, too. It’s part plea, part goodbye—part call-out, part wish for things to be different. More than anything, it’s my “get well soon” card to a love that’s never been simple.
Dear mom,
I’m sorry you used your nine lives thinking you’d finally get peace only to find out you weren’t a cat but a cockroach
They say that hurt people hurt people, and I’m sorry that life’s done nothing but hurt you
The internet taught me that oxy is used to relieve severe pain, but however many pills you take mother, it won’t treat the rot that eats away at your soul
I wish I could unzip your chest and weed it all out, but I don’t think there’d be much left of you if I did
Sometimes I wonder if you ever feel alone because with all the demons you introduced into my life, I know that I never will
If someone asks me how I am, I’ll reply that there’s a sadness that rotates throughout my body, it’s a fact that won’t change even when I feel loved
My wounds won’t turn into scars before you stop stabbing them, so why is the knife still bloody in your hands?
I used to be great at feeling nothing, but now I can’t feel something without feeling everything, so I’d rather not talk about what happened,
but this is my get well soon card.
PS. I love you.
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