i am always too aware that the only person i have in the world is my mom,
and she is the person i have mistreated most.
I can’t really stay objective about my own character when i listen too much to my friends;

my american, disconnected friends who have been liberated and were never made to feel guilty for the life breathed into them.
everyone i know acts like they had a right to be alive, to be born, that it was their parent’s obligation and personal favor to them, to fuck that night and not clean up.

i cannot ask for advice or understanding from these people. It’s hard to translate all the threads that connect me so uncharacteristically to my mother: our relationship is bizarre, backwards, hurtful and vital. I am only myself for her, she is the skeleton under my skin but keeper of all the skeletons in my oversized wardrobe.

She wrecks me and builds me up, I am stunned in silence because I am afraid to keep speaking the words that rip at your skin.

I am tired of seeing you exposed, because if you are all I have and I am all that’s left,
I am a crab without a shell exposed to salty sea elements,

dragging you like seaweed tangled in my legs ensnaring me,
keeping me,
Keeping me.