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Title: A Poem to Capture my Mother Post by: shimmersh on April 11, 2013, 06:03:43 PM How does one begin to explain the years of roller coaster rides, abuse, guilt, and pain? I wrote this poem a few years ago and thought I would share, because I feel like so many adult children of BPD mothers will find commonalities with my story.
The Sweet Scent of Narcissus (By SKZ) I was born to my mother’s mouth, raised by her thin lips when they smiled, but constantly thrown when they frowned, and those same pink impressions killed me six years ago when she threw up more benzapine than she could choke down in an hour, and I found her coffee-coated hair along my pillow while her stained body, swaddled in strawberry sheets, hid in some other reality she murmured about, without disturbing her charcoal lashes. ‘Why have you taken to spilling coffee in my bed now that I’m old enough to understand?” “Because, Because, Because! I don’t want you going, there are black flees that drink the blood of young girls like you, and did I tell you I was raped there by a doctor? Don’t trust anyone who isn’t beautiful like the rain mixed with snow in December, and don’t forget your ice-skates or life-jacket.” She stripped once in our living room, dazzling herself with her cheerleader curves, and leaving Victoria’s lacey Secret sprawled on the couch, somehow forgot her bare-bottomed adventure the next day and blamed my father’s inadequacy, which I understood later when I could orgasm and she loved the rain because she could melt with it as it smeared her mascara and plastered hair to her damp cheeks as little drips fell from Shirley Temple curls, and she would watch those storms for hours as April showered her with emotion, and my father usually peeled her soaking body from the mud before she could blame him for letting her drown in tear-drop reflections. We never had red bulbs on our Christmas trees ‘Because, they remind me of when Art raped me on crimson sheets three years after I turned eighteen’ and that was fine with me, because my mother had no idea that I could remember the time she pulled a knife across her wrists while threatening to leave everything behind; and she would have left us that day, my birthday, had my father not wrestled the blade from her grasp. She would have done that for me after leaving a trail of red ink through my grandmothers house, marking every card with a vivid reminder of the mistakes her mother made raising her, because she wanted to protect me ‘from my mothers evil intentions. No one will ever hurt my daughter, you deserve more and so do I, because my mother only sent me a dollar in college even though Tom touched my breasts, and your fathers ex-girlfriend tried to drown herself in a hurricane, and even when Steve Grogan asked me to Prom I declined, because Sheanna, I’m a pretty amazing woman!’ But it was September that she loved the most when she could dance with the leaves and sing-yell about her mothers neglect and all the times her father molested her with his eyes that probably never even saw past the book he withdrew to. The fireflies she crushed in her palm made her glow as she moved up and down Up and down Up and down like her moods on any day like Sunday when she locked my dad in the bathroom and yelled for an hour about how his abuse had deflated her and she couldn’t go on being the victim of his ~, except she forgot to mention all the times she hid his keys and stole his credit card to pay for hotel rooms and Cinderella fantasies, And this year, while my father and I cook the turkey together again without her, my brother proudly hangs a red bulb on his wreath as I stare at my mothers tinted reflection there and I can’t help but wonder where she is and when she’ll come back from this years holiday ball. Title: Re: A Poem to Capture my Mother Post by: GeekyGirl on April 12, 2013, 08:50:05 AM Oh my goodness, that's so sad but well written, shimmersh. Did writing that help you get your feelings out?
It's great that we have a number of artists/poets/musicians here--I really think that being creative through art, writing and music helps us form healthy outlets to work through our feelings. Title: Re: A Poem to Capture my Mother Post by: ScarletOlive on April 12, 2013, 02:56:43 PM shimmersh, oh wow, thank you for sharing this. The story you tell is very emotional and sad, and yet there is an effervescent glow to the words, like a hope beyond the pain. It's really an amazing poem. Your use of imagery and metaphor is great, and the poem has a kind of humming rhythm that swells like a song. Has the poem's meaning changed at all for you since you wrote it? Take care, dear one.
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