I'll never forget
the tiny checker board pattern
that made my eyes hard to blink
grew my stomach into knots
making the Happy Meal
impossible to digest and eat
or the purple bags
drooping under your tired eyes
or the way your hands always shook
when you told the store clerk
nothing but little white lies
and wrote an illegible cheque
without a wonder of how to pay back
but you always needed
the little checkboxes checked
or else all of Amber Oaks
and even their close friends
might call you a bad mother
and discover the ruse
you always hid elegantly
in the elastic band
of your worn out sweat pants
where the fabric exposed your bony knees
curtly above your dirty Keds shoes
a generation of suffering
a familial tree of possessed demonology
haunted by the horrors
of never having enough
money to simply eat healthy
or have a well-balanced meal
or enough pink lung tissue
required to breathe effortlessly
so you would rather lie
through your coffee stained teeth
say that things are alright
that you'll always stay cordial for the kids
even though they have long since learned
that the lies are deluded with myths
and that the shame we carry
affects the cosms around us too
our despondent grocery bags
we sewed together
with the only fiber we had left
from our childhood blankets
and abused animal friend toys
but my own knitted knapsack got torn
all the contents leaked onto the floor
some odd years ago
and my clothes all fell off
in an empty open room
and at first I was ashamed
to be sacred and all alone
so I coddled myself in the fetal position
and immersed myself
in whatever escape happened
to be closest to my fingertips that day
but eventually I braved myself
to pick up the shattered pieces of glass
lying in the dirty street gutters
and even though it made my flesh bleed
I glued them back together
to make myself a hand-mirror
and finally saw
my pale thinning body first-hand
my shaking distorted face
and my limbs vibrating from stress
from the inability to eat and get nutrients
and I just stared and stared
into my personal hand-mirror
like a glowing crystal ball
until there was something
to hold onto and to love
and over time I'd make little changes to my hair
and try on new styles of shoes on
and use thrifted clothes
to coat and hide my skin raw and bare
and even resort to tiny needles soaked in ink
to cover up the damage
on my exterior and interior kinks
until eventually
I enjoyed the man I had become
and I gained the might
to stab all the trauma
right in its jugular
as I sit and write
on a pile of decaying corpses
from the wars of my past
and the enemies who had fallen
as I sit cross-legged
outside the mote
in the eye of god
protecting the crystalline castle
of pure white happiness
and holy brave might
now while I still sometimes get sad
from time to time like all sinners do
and let empathy get the best of me
like a night bingeing on booze
I sometimes play blundering moves
black bishop defending white knight
with a foggy brain puking on the grass
coated in a carpet of morning dew
I still gain clarity
when I think of my hand-mirror
staring back into my hazel eyes
now able to blink without getting dizzy
and I stop to remember
that you could have tried to do the same
but you chose to stare at the television static
in your worn out sweatpants
offering you nothing but a false sense of warmth
an invisible bubble guarding inner shame
so you chose fixate on those stupid
trivial little checkboxes
or the whispering of old
maternal ghosts
instead of actually looking
into the pits of my aching soul
and ask what is really going on there
and how a mother's love and guiding light
might be able to help and ease the pain
but now I can only see the man
and the woman he chose to marry
on a grassy knoll inside my stomach
they live in nothing but holy matrimony
in peace and in semblance
with the ever-shifting bouncing world
they no longer shake or starve when it gets cold
they simply hike and hitch
always hand in hand
toward the north star's light
free from the guilt of abusive exes
and their dismissive parental children
taking them to a bright lit-up gully
where all the animals and plants
and strange people and experiences
sit in one place around a campfire
all of them share one common story
they all will actually serve the couple right
not in denial of their shortcomings
but in a wonderful showing of love
to try to fight beside them
in this figmented game
we all call life
