Erin Danhi
19 May 2011
Mom
You wanted me to be my own little person so I
Wore pink polka dots with green pants and purple jellies.
You instilled in me avarice for books, but it came
At the price of cavities and pregnant jokes before I
Even knew how one got that way.
Sugar always kept me interested.
You wanted me to love everyone for who they are, not what.
My first best friend was half black, half white, and all gay
But to me, he was just the blue ranger to my pink ranger.
You fended off the opinions of my bigot father who provided
The roof, the food, the stuff, the bruises.
His love always tertiary or absent.
You never wanted me to know your darkest secrets
And constant lies for fear that I could not understand or forgive.
White powdery outlines brushed away and brushed off.
Until I was eleven, I didn’t know, but Dad told me to drive that wedge.
To him, your grams were much worse than his gallons.
Young pliability made it true for me too.
Years later we talked together over shots of interferon and two
Hours later, another to undo the first. Five years without a tainted
Sneeze and months without a fifth stuck under your brake pedal.
We hugged, we read, and you stoked the fire I carried
For the man I would later marry. His words like “addiction” and
“Disease” breathed an inferno into the embers I’d carried for you.
You moved away and finally fell in love again. Too soon,
You felt a pain in your breast and initiated your self-destruction.
You let it all go; your body, your love, and your sobriety.
With every phone call, my anxiousness grew as did the lopsided
Ratio of your words to your tears. My faith in you to do it
One more time kept me here and I wish I’d lost it. You did.
A rare rainy day in southern California and I’m on the phone
And then the floor. “She left a note for you,” Death’s informant says.
My boss carries my seizing body down a flight of stairs I hate
And puts me in a car with a great woman that, thankfully
Reminds me nothing of you and who holds me for three and a half miles.
My husband wakes up to me screaming words he can’t understand.