mom can you come get me things are getting bad again and i feel every insult like a sharp tooth and i feel my dreams rotting under my fingernails and i feel too much all the time or else i feel nothing at all and it doesn’t seem to matter if i drink and dance and party or if i stay at home curled up to study
mom are you sure when i was born i was a person and not just a vortex. always hungry. always swallowing. no matter how much goes in me i always end up empty.
hi mom it’s me again. it’s mother’s day and it’s been five years since i wrote this and i’m still sitting on the floor and still writing poetry but i’ve moved to a different city. you and i are making plans to go see the lilacs and i keep thinking about this one wednesday where i’d had a class talking about eulogies and it made me sad and sick so i called you to say i love you and i appreciate everything you’ve done for me & you were so worried by that. by the fact that i never tell you how much i love you. you got scared because you thought it meant something bad was happening.
i know it’s just how our family is. we never talk about this kind of thing. we show up for each other but never say it and i should say it more. i should tell you that i know you checked and when you saw that you’ve given birth to a vortex and not a child you still said: well this thing that is always lonely and hungry and sad and empty…. this is still mine.
rabbit mothers pull out the fur from their chest to line a warren and i keep thinking about how sometimes you talk about the ways you’re hungry too, how your teeth hurt with desire, how you gave up your fur to line our home and how we walked with our hands on the wall. i don’t even think it’s that you’re my mom i think it’s that you’re you, and that everyone needs a person like you in their life, or otherwise the whole thing catches on fire. and i think maybe you saw my bellybutton and you saw the ways i am you-but-younger and i remember one time we were in the kitchen and you closed your eyes and said your deepest regret was passing your depression on, that you’d never wanted any of us to feel something like this, a hollowness that carries no sound or echo
i wake up spitting out fur and i wake up kicking my feet and i am finding a timid kind of rabbit peace. good morning mom i’m going to come get you so we can walk in the sunshine and i am going to come get you so we can build a soft home in braided hair and i am going to come get you to tell you i am sorry for being ravenous and then we are both going to stretch our legs out on the grass and we are going to eat until all the little angry embers in our blood turn into diamonds and we are going to eat until the numbness feels like a half-remembered song and we are going to eat until we are both full to the brim so that when we turn our cheeks to the sky it feels like the happiness could slosh out if we move too quick. we will eat, and it will be tomorrow, and we will both make a point to clean out the rot from our hearts. after all, it’s spring.
