My Daughters…
My Daughters…
Helena. Phaedra.
The light. The bright.
I named you after goddesses
because I believed their stories-
-the whisper of their bones-
Would weave a shield into your life.
I am not a good mother.
I am not sweetness of honey
Or sandwiches cut in squares.
I am the sea witch
The kraken who devours her young.
I drag you to the bottom of the sea
And have you drink the truth
Of my old bones.
I know-
We must walk in darkness.
I wanted you to walk your path
In myth and story
To move you forward
In this world that
Devours women.
I say to you —
We must walk in the dark.
We must sit with what hurts.
With what writhes.
With discomfort
With disobedience,
with the truth no one wants to name.
-Breathe here —
Get grounded —
And tell the truth
Even when it’s ugly.
To say:
I ruin things.
That my rage is inconvenient
That my words are swords into your heart.
I know you want the air and the soft things.
You want the breeze of clouds.
Not the cool skin of your mother the water-witch.
My arms lined in suckers-
Rocking your boat.
Demanding the blackness of the depths.
You want your stories of wizards
Who have no wounds.
You sleep and scroll.
I bring you across an ocean
You argue with me
about my words
About the depths
and crossing the
Bridges of Prague.
And yes —
I am too much.
Intense
Too loud.
Too wanting.
Too pushy.
Remember-
We are mirrors.
My weeds.
My wildest growth.
And I think, sometimes:
I could give up on you.
Let the thread snap.
Let you go.
Say: fine, then —
make your own way,
since you do not want
the myth I offer.
Since what you want
is not for me.
And maybe
that’s exactly my daughters
are meant to do.
This cord that has bound us-
You must cut it.
Walk your own way.
That is how-
You become the god of yourself
I grew up
With knives as words
As alcohol rimmed the lens
And broken glass was my flooring
I see this chain
Has followed us
These generations.
This work is ancestral
it is hard
I snap the silence.
The rage as knives
The glass on the floor
You hate the noise I make
When I shift this pattern.
As I long for harmony
But to touch the softness
Of clouds- we must know
About the flavor of our
Own darkness.
I wonder what you will break?
When you lay alone-
May the silence shape you and
Allow you travel in the dark woods
The shield of your mothers love
Around you.
I wove the name of the goddess
On your skin
The salt of you
Will carry you up
Into stories
Into magic
Into your own dreams.
