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as a punishment
my stepfather used to make me pull the bamboo shoots out of our side yard a sad patch of dirt near the shed door i was a sickly child with diseases unknown to the doctors at the time i wore my melancholy my sickness was an the ever present ghost i was willing to become to save my mother i want you to know i succeeded at nothing i saved no one not even myself i want you to know bamboo is stubborn it grows in the cold rocky soils of small town Maine i used to be a sad child that had hope for a future now i am just another mother lost in the anger of another cruel man he has my daughter now and all i can see is me with my crippled 12 yr old wrists kneeling in the dirt and rocks struggling to pull bamboo shoots i never did a good enough job or so my stepfather told me i was too busy fantasizing about the shed door being a portal to another world where i could be happy i pull the bamboo shoots but they keep growing my stepfather sits in his recliner drugged up on pain pills and yells at me to sit on his lap light his cigarette i see the dead rolling in their graves from regret abuse and sadness i see my future in his cigarette smoke the blue light of the never ending tv is another ending my mother is drifting away in another room my daughter will be born in trauma this story never ends angry men sad women children that pay the price she grows like the bamboo and he is pulling her out by the roots i am watching the shed door waiting for it to open the dead are screaming help it's always the mother's fault the father doesn't count when it comes to the blame of the pain but he should when i found out my father died i smiled because i knew what he did to my mother what he did to me i want you to know he was a criminal that didn't suffer enough for the pain he caused i will feel the same way about my stepfather i will feel the same way about the father of my child when they come to me with ghostly regrets i will pretend they don't exist just like they did to me my father nearly murdered a couple beat the shit out of my mother raped teenagers and when he died he came to me for forgiveness i made him live every memory of pain he caused and i had to relive it through his eyes the suffering was worth it i didn't move him on to a higher plane i gave him the darkness he gave others his soul will never rest there is no excuse the court system fails women and children from prolonged abuse so much abuse as a child made it so i see the dead everyone was afraid of my shitty dad and now as he drifts in the never ending darkness of the pain he has caused so many he is afraid of me i became friends with the darkness just so i could navigate my nightmares my shadows worship me now we are coming for the liars the abusers the ones who take children's innocence and look the other way i see your future i collect the lost souls of assholes like you i never went to prom had some shitty abusive boyfriend so young so lost that his excuse for love was enough is still no excuse i am ashamed of what i have endured i found my voice too late my demons are taking me to homecoming too late this gown woven of shadows and pain is heavy my crown hurts memories like an ax to the head my blood is invisible this poem is for all the women who tried to make nice and fucked themselves over this poem is for my seventeen yr old mother who thought love was being wanted and had me because she wanted to be loved this poem is for my daughter who doesn't know me or her family history who is making the same mistake i did trying to be perfect pretending all is well when all is very wrong protecting a father who doesn't deserve the title this poem is for the dead women who have warned me because they don't want to see another child losing a mother or a mother losing a child or another abusive man getting away with it this poem is for the mother ghosts you know who you are you know the sadness you keep the children you have lost the children you tried to save only to sit at an empty table remembering how you gave part of yourself and it never came back and no one understood and other woman that did pretended they didn't because these masks we wear are so very important those birthday parties like a contest because you wanted to your child to feel loved because you didn't those goodie bags that were supposed to mean something because you came from a small town and didn't know these things your child doesn't remember any of those birthday parties i remember my dad dealing drugs on my weekend visits the only thing he ever gave me was a whiskey flavored ice cream cone and a giant unicorn he threatened a carny for he told me not to trust anyone and my mom did too you think you have found yourself you do art to feel good but you don't feel good this is just another outlet another pretty birthday party you call art that won't be remembered your heart is broken you have accepted sadness grief loss is the only language you will ever be able to understand your empathy doesn't matter you did attachment parenting and it doesn't matter you watched your best friend die and it doesn't matter nothing matters so you watch the dead as they remember these same feelings your job is sifting through the discarded memories of the dead and helping them move on but you can't move on you always go back to that day your mother crying because the court ordered that you as a toddler visit your murdering father in prison you wanted to protect her you felt his lies when he spoke you remembered how he beat your mother when you look away from your mother's tears you see your future the scars you will inflict upon yourself your daughter will look like your mother look like you she won't understand the danger she is in you won't know what to do and eventually you will stop thinking about joy you will stop hoping that things will be different your life will just be a war story without any glory the dead will haunt you you won't sleep and when you do you won't be able to decide if the nightmares are worse then your waking life
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AuthorMichelle Tinklepaugh Archives
June 2023
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