Dear Mom

Dear Mom,


[I know this really isn't a letter like I promised, but you should be used to me giving less then I say I will]


I'm going to feel bad, throwing you into the ocean.


I'm going to have to clench my teeth, close my eyes, and grip my hip [because you're there, forever; in jagged scar tissue with upside down mountain capped M's and a blocky O, you're there, forever.] to keep myself from diving in after you and gathering you back together with the finest cheesecloth, molding you back together and filling you with all the beautiful things you've been drained of. I'll jam sea glass in your eye sockets and replace your weak bird bones with coral, I'll fill your lungs with saltwater [because oxygen obviously never worked; I almost miss that respirator keeping me awake at night] and wrap you with seaweed to hold you together again.


And I'll let you speak by jamming the truths to all my lies I've told you down your throat. I will whispersobconfess all my dirty deeds. I will tell you how each dinner you made me up to your last day was sacrificed to the porcelain Gods with a push, push, push of the nails you polished Superstar Purple.  I will tell you how my hips are your memoir, a mass of loving razorblade kisses and swallowed truths buried deep inside my skin;  the color of the bruises on you bones. I'll tell you how I horded all your magic pills and sung to you the soft song of suicide along with the beep of the heart monitor, myself falling silent and hand finding it's way to my needy jowls when it hit is final high note of mourning. I will tell you how much smaller your little girl became; a child of corn stalk bones and brittle honey locks with shaky joints like yours and a cyanide smile.


Now, I can't tell you.


Now, you're ashes in a box, shadows in the back of the room, memories pressed into cheap photographs.


At least, I can't tell lies to ashes.  

Love,

Jess