parents
my mother has come leaps and bounds but is still like her mother. i have come leaps and bounds and am still like my mother. i hold her and myself to a standard of perfection that will never be attained. but by many standards her and i have come very far already. maybe the closer you are to perfection the more it gnaws on you, like a bird.
i think very fast. i think ahead to the anticipatory grief of losing them, my parents, mother and father who have given me more than i can ask for, and yet i keep asking. i punish myself with it. i need to be loved, and i am still a child. i cannot express myself. to be loved is to have your mind read. i need to be met here, in this dark room; i need you to come to where i have buried myself in the blankets because you want to, and because you want to hold me
when my mom is trapped, i have my dad. he reads me better when i am like him, silent and downtrodden. i have a mix of his and my mother's thumbs. it is a strange mix. it is only when he knows how to love me that we are close. the rest of the time the arrows miss and i have to guess where they came from