vent poetry: triggers (Patreon)

“Where have you been all my life?”

I want to tell him that I’ve been the dirt under my mother’s nails, the sting of her palm against my cheek,

"You are your father’s face,"

I hold his temper; I am the ice in his eyes and my mother’s sixteen-year-old whimper,

and then, after that, I am each curl on my head that’s been fucked out of place,

the face of a man in his dark washed jeans, his mouth between my legs before I ever reached thirteen,

I’m a raw threat in the back of my throat when someone has loved me, their sweat stained sheets and vacant face, my metronome heart where love hasn't found a place,

I’m the eyelash I pick from my daughter’s cheek, a wish that she turns out nothing like me.

I want to tell him,

I’m not one to be wishing for,

now, before, or after,

I am a bitter taste in your throat and the ache thereafter; you will never know the whole story, my story, I have smeared each page.

I am good at being fragile, being delicate, italicizing each bold. I can place a laugh and a smile and a wrinkle of my nose,

but I am not good, and I am not soft, and there was something warm in me it has simply shut off