mourning

I've been mourning my mother's death

since I was nine years old, but she lives

posting online of earlier days when

I was willing to give her the world

although it would cost me everything.

I pity myself for her absence on my big day

though I don't get married till next spring

how insulted she would be that she can't

wear those ridiculous white dresses again

like she did at my sister's wedding.

Sometimes, just to torture myself, I listen

to the voicemail she left, sobbing like a ghost

any defiance is a betrayal, a thousand cuts

does she know that she could have had

so much, by wanting just a little less?

She told me she would die, and soon

her impending demise held me in a chokehold

I barely wiggled, but had to breathe some day

so I let the body she was so ashamed of go limp

fell to the cold ground so I can get back up.

And so, here we are, and she mourns me too

the good daughter who listened, so sweet

and I mourn for a mother I could have had

who would say she will try harder to keep me

who knows how to hold, other than by the neck.