Now You Want My Love

I've watched you prepare your coffin,
the rat's nest you call a home,
the brown hole you call a bed,
amongst medicine bottles and candy wrappers,
you crawled in, waiting to exhale
that last mournful sigh.

The plastic smile you wear for strangers,
tossed on the bathroom floor,
next to piles of designer clothes,
stale makeup, jewelry pouring
from open drawers.

In your younger days, I remember,
you wore it all so well,
styled your cutting words.
Those times you wished
you never met my father,
those times you wished
your husband never died,
the life you've spent waiting,

waiting, so I imagined you
already dead.
Your absence as your presence,
your silence as your embrace,
your wrath as your kiss,
and I told myself I can,
I can't, I should, I won't
but I did until my head ached,
and my eyes burned, and then
I felt no more.

I want to become pure scream
and shatter all those things
you keep sacred, your dining room table
now empty of guests, the cabinets and cabinets
of dusty china, cobwebbed crystal
and tarnished silver tea sets.

I want to become pure ocean
black, tumultuous, with stinging salt,
to drowned the years of shame,
and bust your high-horse huff
upon the jagged rocks.

Now you want my love. I know.
In your final years of sorrow
when you grasp my arm
I feel you searching for those
familiar reins of guilt.
Now you want my love. I know.
As the childless child
I have infinite time to give.
Now you want my love.
I know...

but you never taught me how.