family

birthday cards for a 12 year old girl are taped to the front door
bending, falling over, like exhausted peels exposing bitter fruit
she eats half a box of sprinkled cookies in her mother’s bedroom
the girl without her own
at noon the summer sun a wild citrus barely peeks through
the thick shades of the ghetto and in the light of the television screen
she eats the other half, her company the sounds of audience applause happy
she was born today
puberty spent in front of that tv, shows repeated every season while sessions of obesity
and bulimia, obesity and bulimia, obesity and
the battle to be beautiful never won despite the shrinking skin

high school years in rooms full of eyes stuck on vanity and expectations, the eyes
that ignored the trembling hands plagued with razor wounds she gave herself
on the day she turned 16
no explanation really
none asked
like a beautiful woman who dresses herself in beautiful things
streaks of purple and blue, bloody lines decorated her arms, a teenage manifesto of
obesity and bulimia, obesity and bulimia, obesity and
the swan that resembled another animal
a bear, a boar, a beast

on the eve she turned 20 the girl’s dad died
the last conversation of shared stories of attempted suicide
the man whose DNA dripped from the veins she cut
in the shower flowing red, flowing clear, flowed red
deep red and down the drain
the rusted pipes, the rusted girl, dying or not dying
like her father, a man she could never say she knew well
even if she wanted to
insanity took his mind years ago, the streets before that,
drugs before that, a pedophile before that, his schizophrenic mother before that

the girl’s mother in mild shock helps burn the man she
left a long time ago, thought she had rid of the pauper, his uselessness
but the mother helped clear out a shelf, put his ashes next to books she never read,
a tv always in heat
she bought the cheap urn and the flames that made
his skin, his flesh, his manhood
infected with a lifetime of ignorance a
bed of gray matter
one last expense for the man, one more expense for the mother without money

on the day the girl turned 25, too old to be a girl
too young for the stretch marks and fatigue and nights in despair
that knew every season, she played cowgirl with a 6 foot rope
lassoed shadows on the wall, caught the line on a hook from the ceiling
let it hang in the dark, flirting with phantoms in the room
a quarter century old
she wondered how would it fit, unlike her clothes
unlike her skin, rough twine tight around her neck when,
the girl who had been falling her whole life,
fell, just like her father, the mother always said,
a bastard