The Hardest Poem I Have Ever Written

This was beyond tough. Thanks to James D for forcing it out of me.

Apology

There are no words to cover braces coiled teeth

Spitting adolescent angst
War wounds of middle school warfare
You wore
Like you had walked the halls yourself
Like a warrior

When the sun bore you a daughter you knew someday she

Would bloom
Like turmoil
Backlash not understood
But you braced for misunderstanding
like a viking

Grinned and bore the pain of child’s
Curled lips or
Unsettled restlessness.

I was always the restless one
Never tolerant of idle
I brought light into the house like pixie dust
Put on skits for house guests and
Played fire engine with the tree in the front yard

Giggles filled the hallways while you clung to

every last laugh
Never on the inside of the joke
Never one of the girls
Though secrets and heartaches passed

notes through our hallway
Never scribbling the needs of hands veined with
Child and husband bearing.

And me
Illiterate to notes etched in cupboards after bedtime
Like my consciousness was limited to
daily explosion between temples
The thunderstorm of 14 that crashes down

on the house like a
screaming cyclone
And you
Always the last remaining ship after the waters had settled.

There are no words to scream adult guilt into the
inherent selfishness of daughter
I’m not sure my body could take anyone

being as mean to me as I was to you then

In those days of misdirected personality
And misguided attention
In those days when turmoil crashed

through our kitchen like neighbor’s dogs
sniffing for something bleeding and torn

to sink their teeth into

I cannot apologize
I cannot find words that say

I wake up sweaty with nightmare
Of my someday child
ripping through the house like a torrent rainstorm

I want to tell her I will be the harbor
Dig my feet into sand and wait
Bracing for the storm of her forgiveness.