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Conversations with My Mother By Sydnee Wagner QuailBellMagazine.com Each conversation is a Sunday morning phone call hung over from honeyed wine I am your emotionally prodigal daughter, both of us empty vessels devoid of sailors. I picked each of your fingernails off Desperately clawing at the last vulnerable flesh left on your body-- shielded beneath brittleness and dirt I wanted to kiss each bloodied tip, To be the first where no one had been. And while you screamed beneath your frame, I was fashioned into a Persephone banging my bloody fists on the glass of a pinned butterfly. I did not comprehend that child hands were not meant for saving. I used my own wings to trace your scars And my lips to hush words that painted idyllic portraits of how you would love me better Better than she loved you. Each conversation is A scrapbook weighed down with things neither of us have said I painted the worst words gold and crimson making a manuscript out of matricide I clawed your face, Kicked your stomach, throwing violent fits and novena candles at the citadel you called your body. Thanklessly I drank your tears and blood and sweat until my belly was full of salted velvet copper. Like all children, I didn’t have a heart till I took one from your body It became an effigy of a daughter you could not bare to look at; My eyes too much like his; my thoughts too much like yours. Each conversation is A bitten tongue bleeding out ringing questions wondering why you could not believe A wilting twelve-year-old ghost When she told you boogeymen shared her bed I became the antithesis of a child trapped under cold blankets and the whispered threats Of monsters who were once men Whose gnarled claws left invisible scars on every inch of my flesh like a map for future conquerors. And even still, every conversation is A hopeful I love you Grasping for you, begging to be held I cannot replace you with endless noise And the cold touches of lovers, Yet I cannot forgive you. Sydnee Wagner is a closet poet and a PhD student at The Graduate Center, CUNY, studying Renaissance literature and ecofeminism. Though seemingly busied by her research and art, she still manages to find time to drink copious amounts of coffee and peruse the Internet for funny videos to send to her friends. Sydnee’s poetry serves as a platform for her to explore her relationship with her mother, ethnicity, and sexual abuse, among other things that inspire her during bouts of insomnia. #Unreal #Poem #Poetry #CreativeWriting #ConversationsWithMyMother #Ecofeminism #RenaissanceLiterature #Verse Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. CommentsComments are closed.
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