Reading back over Life by Fives I feel the need to explain my relationship with my mother’s memory. Since I just so happen to have an open letter I posted in an internet poetry forum last Mother’s Day that does just that, I’m dropping it in here.

Dear Mother,

I don’t remember you and I still miss you so badly I cry sometimes.
I despise my tears and I despise you a little for being such meaningless spilled milk.

And I ache.
I ache still for this missing jigsaw puzzle piece that’s stretched everything just a little to make room for a spot of glaring white memory.
I ache for this fill-in-the-blank that I love so much still without any idea why. I ache to know why I love you and if you were even worthy of it.
I ache wanting so badly to know that you’re not the graceful queen of beauty I can’t help but imagine you are.
I ache with fear that you weren’t every bit as f—ed up as I am.

And I’m afraid.
I’m afraid writing this.
I’m afraid to turn your eyes to me.
I’m afraid that your judgment will neither condemn nor approve.
I’m afraid that the sight of me will hurt you.
I’m afraid you’ll see nothing but just another thing – nothing to provoke anything from you.
I’m afraid there’s no love in you for me. No affection or appreciation.
I’m afraid of Nothing.
I’m afraid that our eyes will meet across this emptiness and we’ll discover such disparity between us that even the blood that ties us is severed by the awareness of it.

I hate you a little.
I do and I’m sorry.
And I won’t contemplate why tonight. My hates are too large and complicated to bother with most of the time and they never say anything good when I talk to them anyway.
And I have doubts that you deserve the effort.

But I still imagine laying here that you’re with me.
You kneel beside this bed and look at me and I can’t see a thing in your eyes.
Then you touch my hand and I see…whatever you have to show me. Anything. It doesn’t matter.

I just want to hold your hand and see you again.
I want those memories back.
I want to know what you feel like and what you smell like and why I love you so much it hurts that you’re gone.
I want a special memory of you that makes me smile.
I want to spit and curse at you and never hurt you at all.
I want to kiss your hair and breath you in again.
My lungs miss your scent. I know they do.

I think I want most of all to know that you’ve watched me all these years.
I want you to see every horrible thing that ever happened to me. Even the things I refuse to remember.
I want you to know that smell and that pain and exactly why I pulled both those triggers.
I want you to see every drop of blood I’ve spilled and every copper tang of madness I’ve tasted.
Every bitter shame and tittering wickedness.
I want my Mother to know the hell of my life.
And I want you to see what I’ve killed and thrown away.
I want you to see that I’ve broken my own hands.

After that and only after that I want you to see that I was able to be happy and content and accept it when my Father washed me clean.
Then I will tell you that I’m in love.
Then I will bring my husband to you so you can adopt him as your own and meet your grandchildren.
Then I’ll show you my home and read you what I have written on the threshold.
Then we’ll talk in the garden and watch the sunset and you can answer all these questions I’ve been saving for you.

And then when you know me and I know you…
Then I’ll tell you the secret I have for you.

I will to tell you that I learned to love without you there to teach me.
I hope you didn’t. I hope you never taught me.
I won’t allow that you ever taught me.
You did not. I will not allow it.

That is my gift to you for every Mother’s Day and my punishment for dying dishonored.