i ran my Mauve Amour fingernail
over her unchipped windowsill
under-ripe tomatoes, green-red
hard as avacados — these she fawns
over, putting them to light, tells
me to hold on, learn patience.
over daisies, clipped cacti, the
geometric patterns on her drapes —
her closet festooned with monogrammed blouses
and pencil skirts
she had her sea-foam couch dying in plastic
makes herself a boudoir of air-conditioned
migraines and mah-jongg
i saw her face, a roadmap
to what I must be
her incinerating eye that is no eye
that weeps or winks
causing strange sounds
to fall from my lips
torrid peppery cold sounds arched
along the windowsill when
her hand
sought out a lock of my hair
to brush back
the afternoon sun blisters round my eyes
i thought I smelled potato pancakes fry, I thought
I heard
Rachmaninoff on a roller coaster gone
marvelously wild in an alpha omega
c# minor prelude cyclone
and let go all my terror
when with no warning
she whacked all her hate into my cheekbone
I don’t want you. Never did.
some mothers would rather see their daughters dead
than love one iota
if we enumerate our pain
in silence
how could a truckload of words
ever tranquilize
what it is
they don’t deliver.