#may 2021.

[thewriterzblok]

Prompt: May 2021

She had heard his excuses before, thousands of times, but this time

[denrbough]

When you're sitting here idly but your entire life is gonna change in the next week

[proserpinah]

i say MOTHER as if it is an insult

i spit it from my mouth

mother

all you ever taught me was how to hate myself

and now i do

are you happy???

  i  saw a picture of myself and cried today

not because i looked bad, but because i looked good

it is your voice that taught me to hate myself

to live with a fury against myself

   you said that you thought yourself ugly and i tried

i tried, didnt i?

to tell you that you were not

but then that poison that you aimed against yourself made its way into my very soul

  the idea that i could look good is so foreign to me

and it is partly because of you

and i dont blame you

i blame all that forced you to feel this way yourself

   but mother is an insult sometimes.

mother

an insult.

[proserpinah]

there is a ghost living in our house she hides in the perfume bottles and never-finished tubes of body lotion she does not use any more she hides in the note above the mirror that she once wrote to herself she hides in the wardrobe in her bedroom where she has not slept for five years 

we allow her to live in our house by not cleaning out her things

we allow her to live in our house by clinging to what she has left behind

we don’t need her perfume bottles or body lotion nor the notes she left to herself nor the clothes she wore but they remain so she does too

there is a ghost living in our house and she’s friendly and quiet and she makes us feel whole again so we allow her to haunt us

[proserpinah]

i don’t want to carry this grief anymore / yet i don’t know who i am without it

someone left a hole in my being and i’m afraid i won’t ever be whole again (mh)