I can’t go up because I don’t know how.
Nobody has shown me.
So many names, my mother, I’m never sure what to call you. So many names for all your predators and crushes and suitors. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m here and I’m sorry I’m not here. Would you have made it on your own without the comorbid condition of motherhood and the slowness and consistency of time? I’m sorry for the slowness and consistency of time; years like zombies dawdling toward a cliff edge holding back the child’s writhing body, itching to grow, packed around the same mind I have now. I’m sorry the concept of promise outgrew the concept of child and that systemic contradiction and wizardry left only a dim sense of suspicion; a crescendoing breeze, accumulating clouds amidst bewildering dichotomies. I’m sorry for resembling your relatives and captors and the man who penetrated you, who’s still there, communicating boldly via intersections of others’ thought waves and memories, blatant into the long nights, haunting, for my inferiority in the face of nuclear family culture, feeding on detritus of white goods, leisure sports, laminate floors, a real home and fake recycling, for creeping by night into a tight void, blinds down, brain blown glass-thin, electric impulses and bloated thoughts bolted in. For this life being the only one my quiet mind knows, its many versions and phases, I’m sorry. I wasn’t your daughter — or anyone — when you were the blue-water navy, or the beheaded, or the baby boy. Or was I? I’m sorry I was not yet born and could not yet hear you when you were over there, listening carefully for the rain and small movements of animals, for sounds of life, through a green, five-fingered haze. I’m sorry I consider sentiment, fact; authenticity, originality, when they are irrelevant. So many choices in supermarkets, the natural habitat of panic attacks, it’s enough to make anyone sorry and I am. I’m sorry it’s taking over half a century to link your purple-patched brain scan to the basic biology of stress. The piano thunders on, sustain pedal wired to the facial muscles of all your neglecters, aching like hell behind their stamina and machinery. I’m sorry I had, logically, to think of my own self first / simultaneously, navigating through the fire and acid of Trust and her sycophant Love before returning. All the powerful were women; the power of penises and facial hair originated there, cajoled by matriarchs. As if skin and breath were insignificant!
I’m so sorry. Where are you now, to take into my arms and resuscitate? Is it too late, given you’re fifty and no longer a child? It’s always mothers and mind control which is why
I thank you for breaking the cycle, withstanding the enormity of generations, magnetic as water, to let us go. You weren’t to know about other outrageous families and sadistic counterparts. A nugget of my limbic system remembered choosing my own lemon-yellow baby clothes so thank you. I squeezed that into the thumb-sized space in the palm of my hand knowing all along they were wrong and imploding with it. I’m sorry I wept in the shower for your canceled wedding, letting the violet dress down the plughole, unsure what it all meant except things staying the same, future aggravating my brain, a baby brother gone again. I’m sorry you were out there, alone, defined by the worst of others and defined by your children’s prisms of hope and survival mechanisms. In one version, you did marry and lived in a house with green walls and extravagant furniture. I’m sorry that consensus reality had you set fire to your bed as you lay in it; arrested, put in a cell, let off the next day because the lawyer believed it was a genuine attempt and convinced the police. I’m sorry you’ve had to withstand such torrents of knowledgeless advice and legal toxification, clinging to reality by a sinew of tooth, remembering yourself, through the rough and the smooth. I’m sorry I was absent, memorizing books of the Bible for a bar of Dairy Milk, owning up to things I’d never done, getting confirmed as an antidote to the evil core of me. I’m sorry it was exotic to think of kids like me ending up in prison, coincidentally, inevitably or prevented (which is the same), salvaged, peristalsized through society, brain safely contained, doused daily in cold water or electricity or disgrace, temptations kept consistently far enough away as to appear illusory like you, my brave mother, fantastic prodigy in flowing white caftan, knotted long brown hair, a beautiful gaze of solemnity, rare stone, emotionless (defined by others). I’m sorry I was ill-prepared for your soiled mattress and comatose body, under a wave of advocaat and transistor radios oozing with cheap Scotch. Even I developed feelings for them amidst adults acting like it’s okay to leave you this way, the blue bottle flies in on it, inflated with dog shit and red hot egos, resting on your cheek, your lip, too cunning to get rid of. I’m sorry that laughing off a difficult childhood didn’t make it never happen. Even a basic calculator recognizes an infinite loop as a malfunction; don’t they see cutting off my privates every night needs additional information? I’m sorry I talked you out of wounding yourself although I know it feels hopeful and lets in sunlight and air through an open door. I’m sorry I can’t help you go up. I, also, don’t know how. I’m sorry I prioritize the stimulation of adrenalin and opioids in my own axis before I come to you. Thank you for believing I love you even though you know I don’t know love or trust it. I dreamed a baby died from kidney failure. The worst part? Not knowing distress from relief in the face of the mother, like a child in an experiment. What does this mean? My man fearing a moment of madness. Not locking the knives away but keeping a steady eye on them, paying attention to the moon and turning moods. He underestimates me; I’m my own doppelgänger. Here I am, locked to him, discussing sex positions and holiday destinations. Here I am courting solitude in the doorway, a pair of eyes and a chest cavity thrumming on the dark boundary between survival and self-control. While there are no babies, I carry on. I am testament to the problem of the baby. Look at me — flaunting my own survival. Who am I? Except the parasite that accidentally caught on to your womb wall as you lay stoned on a fur-lined coat in a hallway in Moss Side? Happy accident, accidentally on purpose. Close the piano lid. Empty a drawer. Things happen. I’m sorry for absences, holidaying in France, studying guilt, time-traveling the pain barrier, intent on nerve endings and their connections to various biological systems. Learning to accept and relinquish responsibility appropriately. Throwing back the hot stone in a horizontal line. Thank you to the policeman who took all the men whose safety you feared for to the pub so you could come home for dinner, monologue, nail varnish remover, a set of impartial weighing scales and cheap French wine. I’m sorry about the home, the wine, the monologue resonating against the plastic mug others might keep for you, fussing over makeup-smeared walls, upholstery and understatements. I’m a bit sad we can’t see Al. He comes on the radio sometimes. I’m sorry I’m not bringing you home, finally, to thrive and repair. I wanted to stay, singing Luther Vandross on the walkway outside at 6 a.m., fetching toast from the neighbor. I was hoping for perfection, believing in anything, all those years. Is it too ambitious to hope? I’m sentimentally sorry despite a genuine fear of sentimentality and pseudo-unhappiness, struggling under the weight of an A1 poster on complex trauma and a pair of Sennheiser headphones to lock me in. Think of what it is when God himself puts his arms around you and says “welcome home.” There’s nothing mysterious about my thoughts or affect, nor yours, nor anyone’s, biologically generated by the relationships we hide our consciousness from. Oh unhappiness and infidelity! Disguised in metaphor you’re nothing but the deep yearning of an infant for its mother and the furiousness. Making this connection is like remembering being born, which is like folding time, which is no one to blame and
all the world to blame. Thank you for picking up the handless, footless doll in the park, saving him from a dog or fox or thoughtless children, keeping him to your breast on the tram, the bus, in pubs and not noticing the scathing looks. I learnt to trust without you, leaving my thoughts outside for five minutes and trusting the neighbor’s cat not to urinate on them. I’m sorry my stand-in mother was an evil replica, machine-like yet unpredictable. We tried to calculate an algorithm for her mood, as you would’ve done, and in 14 years never cracked it. She remained seated when I left for the last time. You weren’t to know and they wouldn’t have believed you anyway. We learn to accept the clouds for what they are
and wait, patiently.
