Engraved on my wrist is the word forgiven. It’s been here for months, even years, but you swallowed down your guilt with a bottle of pills before you could notice it. Sometimes, I still see you in my fleeting glances towards mirrors. If you hold me tight, you will find that my bones are made of metal. When I was eleven years old my mother’s words drove me to replace them one by one. I taught myself that if I could stare at the wall long enough, they’d leave me alone. Sometimes I could still manage to muster up a barrier strong enough to prevent my seeing of our tragedy.

Long ago, my ribs were the safety blanket somewhere between silence and cacophony. But slowly, you wrapped hatred around my abdomen like a corset and with the veins you tore from my wrists, sewed my ribcage. Despite my incessant refusal, you got underneath my skin.

Now, my heels are splintered with cracks and my words are reaching a plateau of cessation. This plethora of the unacceptable suffocates me, consumes me. Your life was one made for losing, but this abrupt need for you feels cataclysmic.

The day you died I collapsed under this burden and the weight of my own sky. Days after, I sat shivering in my puddle of self loathing. I still don’t know if this is the death of a mother or the death of a silhouette. She was an outline of a creation so magnificent that God couldn’t afford to give her an inside. There wasn’t enough soul to keep her veins flooded with life, not enough sanity to keep a woman sane. There was not enough love to keep me loving, but she was somehow enough of a person to make me miss her.

Mom, you cut your home to shreds just to feel more at home. But now, I will vow to you, let me become your home. I will hold my chin high and keep my hands low. I will touch the stars every night and every flicker of every light will be you. I will vow. Hug me, and instead of running away, I will run towards you. Instead of drifting like a ghost with my words, I will scream at you. Love me, and I vow, I will love you back.