The Apology I Wish My Mother Had Given

Your apology tasted of eucalyptus and riddles,
a balm made for cauterizing, not comfort-
cool only the way metal is cool
before it’s pressed into a wound.

It was just a dream. 

You didn’t say sorry.
You said, I didn’t know how to mother without breaking something.
And I remembered how you broke
the handles off drawers,
the rules of childhood,
the skin on my lip. 

You spoke like a faucet corroded open-
each syllable gurgling with things
that should’ve drowned long ago.
Your voice carried the rot of closets
where I learned how to breathe like a fugitive
inside my own home.

You said:
I built you from wire and apologies I never said aloud.
I wanted to answer,
but my mouth filled with the grit
of every lullaby you forgot to sing.

Your hands, in the dream,
smelled like bleach and old pennies
the currency of every time you told me
love isn’t muted, it’s survival.
And survival came in belts
and dishes thrown like bad prayers.

You said:
I carved you out of my fear,
and then punished you for resembling me.
And it landed
not like truth,
but like a drawer yanked open so hard
the handle rips off in your hand.

I remembered the way you stared
like I was a crime scene
you didn’t recognize committing.
That gaze was the first mirror
I ever learned to break.

In the dream,
you held out a bag
full of your own teeth
not metaphor,
just molars and canines and incisors
slick with spit and regret.
You said:
These were for biting. I don’t need them now.
In the dream-
but it wasn’t a dream,
just memory wearing softer glow-
you didn’t offer teeth.
You handed me the socks.
The real ones.
Still crusted with sap,
each stuffed with green pinecones,
small enough to hide in a hand,
spiked enough to tear a child.
You told me to put them on,
stand up,
walk.
Said it was time I learned
what your disease felt like.
Said I hadn’t understood your suffering.
So I walked.
I walked until the skin peeled off my heels,
until blood seeped through the cotton
and I stopped being your child
and became your penance.


Later, I read that poem – framed by your bed
the one where God carries you
when the road gets cruel.


God was there, but He was hard to see –
through so many tears.
He only carried what wouldn’t show.
He let me walk.
He made sure I left footprints
I could never pretend weren’t mine.

You said:
I love you,
and for the first time
it didn’t feel like a rope I had to pretend was a gift.
It just sat
dense as wet cement
in my lap.

And I let it sit.
Let it dry.
Didn’t carve my name into it.
Didn’t touch it at all.