There are a lot of ways I've tried to describe my childhood, but this is pretty apt. I'm going through a bit of a "I can't write and I'm horrible at it" crisis. But I'm sort of ok with this one, at least the point of it, even if the words aren't just right.
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I spent much of my life on a flight of stairs,
Watching her clean, doing my best to act happy,
Supportive, loving. Rubbing my hands into the old
Grey carpet formed to the stairs like I was formed into
You. I was like the chocolate shell, protecting you from
Zipper mouth, from your self-consciousness,
From your secret-buried-deep childhood.
From the regret I wish you felt when you hit me
With a wooden spoon, or lied to me, or told me
To lie, or to teach myself rather than helping me learn.
The money you spent, funneling cash into
Registers at all the same stores, while I grew out
Of my clothes. I rubbed the grey carpet
The way you taught me to rub the butter into a pie
Crust, just the way your abusive father taught you,
And just the way he gouged your eyes out and your
Conscience. I tried to dig in there, to dig
Into your innards, your center, like a small pumpkin,
While you starved yourself, and taught me to do a pretty
Good job of it too. I tried to make you whole again.
I tried to sort it through, bring a smile to your face,
Protect you from sticking your finger down your throat
Over a toilet. But I didn’t know the whole story, and
I was only a child. Hardly a child. Instead, a gathering
Of unfelt emotions, of loss, an empath at four.
Knowing exactly how you felt at each moment
And being exactly unable to make it better.
Just like the hives and shortness of breath that
I still deal with and no doctor was willing to say the simple word—
Anxiety.
Each morning, each day, each moment of my formative years,
I somehow sat on those stairs. Even playing outside with my
Few friends, I left a shadow on the stairs watching you, making
Sure you were ok. It was never enough. You were never ok.
Not only did I fail at protecting you from your demons,
You very easily, very concisely, seeped the demon into me.
I think you knew, and I think you liked it. I think you enjoyed
Destroying your baby.
Now its in my bones and sinews, you know, the little crevices
In my molars. The two pouched lungs. All my scars spent
Struggling the demon out have not yet worked, and will
Never work, but I insist on continuing to destroy myself,
The way you destroyed me.
On the stairs, I watched as you cleaned the floor with
A bucket stuffed with bleach, the smell still makes my
Eyes roll back into my broken head. The old wash cloth,
You with no gloves, scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees
Just like cinderella. And yet there is no happy ending for either of us.
Your husband ruined you along with you father, and I couldn’t glue
You back together no matter how hard I tried.
I would ask if we could talk, just sit and talk about anything.
That idea was always dismissed.
What an idiot child, she must have thought,
Such an idiot for wanting to talk to another human.
So we didn’t talk “I have known, when they said nothing,
That it did not exist.”
The smell of bleach now makes me physically ill.
I almost faint just being near it. I fall on the floor, face down,
Unconscious and you scrub around me like you’re
Destroying the evidence of a lost childhood.
I lie there until I disappear.
Just the way I stomped up the stairs and slammed the door when
I was angry.
I still float like I’m high on bleach, you still scrub around me as if
I never existed.
And I estrange myself from you, quite proudly, as I walk up
Those grey carpeted stairs into the first bedroom, slam the door
And then jump off a cliff.
