i'm alive, but a different kind of alive

my mother liked to drink up spirits and sleep you off , looking forward to the next night. it's that time of the year, every year, when you think about your mother, or forget to think about your mother. my mother is not your mother. my mother didn't bake lovely desserts, didn't make lovely encouragements, my mother did not plan for her life to look like a jackson pollock painting.

i've lived with strangers my whole life, seeing my mother after all that time was not a huge change. "i can handle this"-- i have a problem loving someone as much as i love my cat. life is beautiful, life is ugly, life is yours, and then life is life's--it always was. i can let go that i understand my mother's life and at the same moment, not at all. i respect a life, her life, even if it is one of the most f_cked up ones that has ever existed.


while your mother was hanging your crayon marks on the fridge, mine was making a meal out of the veins in her arms while nothing came from her mouth, everything from behind her eyes. yes, she's still alive. i don't think anything can kill that woman, not even her. god knows she's tried.

today i felt like the piece of honeycomb i ate.