mommy's pet

mommy issues

Mommy’s pet,

If i’m so special why am I secret?

Do you regret?

The things we shared that i’ll never forget?

Well do you tell me now,

I know I’m young but my mind is well beyond my years

I knew this wouldn’t last but fuck you don’t you leave here!

you rise and set when i have the faintest clue. but your presence demands adjustments — laughters quieten, we shift in seats and retreat to the bedroom. your presence fills the sitting room. it’s expected of you. you occupy, so large, to you. only light in skin and dark in doubts. you ease up on that corner and not just the ones in my mind. you’re ever closing in and even when i leave, you follow me stealthily in my sins.

in my sins.

i gravitate to what gives me life, my woman. she’s, my god.

you birthed me, gave me life. instinctively, we should be tethered. you should nurture and care. i assume you held me gently, kissed my forehead, shed a joyful tear. you must have breastfed me and fed me. i have to believe that. i have to believe that in that room, when you pushed, you must have felt small and less. one less burden. you must’ve sighed in final surrender. it was done, i was done and out. in that moment you must’ve felt calm. but i struggle and i digress.

my woman.

she’s not mine, they never are. you never were.

yet, she gives me life. in your place, she ignites that spark. she noticed me. saw past the covers and facades. so easily and welcoming. my small frame folded perfectly against hers as if we were meant to be. our heartbeats synced every time and blood flowed in same pace. the mundane became extraordinary. the birds seemed to be singing love songs and the breeze whispered her name over and over. my ears became accustomed and my mouth wrapped easily around her syllables. moaning her name would become the most natural. like breathing, she became my calm exhale. the universe was in agreement. even god stood down and she sat in his place. rooting for us in the way flowers’ colours became brighter. the silent pink seemed to splash and the dark red seemed inviting in dangerously cultic ways. the red was dangerously sapphic in the way i’d want us to merge, ritualistic. forever one. she can’t leave me.

i’m always eager for the sun to wake. ready to maximize on the hours. i want to drink her in. so clingy, i cling. adamant and needy. pleading. my single choir sings hymns and prayers, waiting for the sermon. her words, my shelter. her sweet nothings still tasteful all the same. i learnt devotion before i learnt love. i learnt obedience and submission. daughters are early disciples to mothers who don’t know they’re curating scriptures that we adhere to as we grow. unspoken rules and inherited shames all disguised as instincts. it settles in as doctrine. i get anxious to succumb to the night. can’t close my eyes lest i lose my hold of her. don’t disappear on me, don’t turn. don’t let the darkness swallow us in. still be visible to me, please.

she made time for me; visited my bunker in the small hours we had in the night and told me stories. she left when the lights came on. but not to leave me, just to go to her bed. from different classes but we made it work. during games times and lunch. the little interactions mattered. hands touching secretly during parade, grazing each other’s waists when walking by, sneaky glances and naughty smiles. our love was ours, blossoming how we deemed fit.

if i’m so special why am i secret?

but you follow me stealthily in my sin. in the ways i took her in even when i was bleeding from her inflictions. her damn smile was a band aid. the way she held me, an elixir to all the hurt. reverence made me stay. the worship for a being that gave me life. all too used to that ‘suffering makes you stronger’ ‘suffering makes you closer to his power’ and she deserved my worship. my kneeling over even when my knees were crumbling all in exchange for kisses in dark corners and avoidance in public.

you taught me well. i’m your trophy child, your prized possession, and in that way i was hers. the crumbs mattered. the crumbs meant they were falling from a place of abundance and that bargain was acceptable.

i know i’m young but my mind is well beyond my years.

when you spend most of your life invisible and disappearing yourself, being noticed becomes a high. i seek it out and get off on it. looking for you in everyone. in the english teacher that loved my writings to the female friendships and interactions with strangers. i carry these small instances of fleeting interactions with me like relics that are sacred. i hide them deeply like contraband. i ration them and revisit in private. proof that i am alive, i am moving through the world and not merely existing but my existence being seen.

i let your love seep from everywhere else since it can’t from you. a deep-seated envy when i see mothers holding their daughters’ hands in public, out together in a restaurant, laughing. i wonder if her smile is a plaster like mine. i wonder if she carries my sentiments. i wonder if it is possible for that to be real. i wonder if my heart’s become too worn out it can’t beat such that genuine motherly love has become an absurd thought to me.

i long for that. for simple love just by virtue of relation. i don’t have to prove myself, not academic wise or by how useful i am. i would just be enough. i would just get to be. i watch my friends with their mothers. they seem so nice, so welcoming. asking about me and how i am. basic etiquette that gets me riled up, makes me smile. i’d like that. easy conversations with you. talking about love and life but the pursuit for education has made these abstracts and pointless conversations. yet that is where my heart aches more. so best believe, i’ll jump for even the slightest attention.

you taint every love i experience like a stubborn stain that doesn’t clear no matter the detergent. you stick with a stubborn inkling that would’ve been romanticized as yearning if only you just loved me. but you don’t or maybe you do. in your own way?

in that own way that i try to make sense of. that own way that leads me to rationalizing. starving people will eat anything. no care if it’s rotten, no time to check. the offering itself is enough and i’ll eat it up. it becomes easy to mistake proximity for closeness, basic human dignity for care and attention for romantic love. is it even a mistake if that’s what’s always been dealt?

full love becomes suspicious.

hugs in passing feel grand. i feel their hands linger, the closeness is unfamiliar. the ‘i love you’ after the goodbye echoes in the chambers of my empty heart, i’m not used to. i read into it more than i should.

they say, growing up is understanding your mother and being a woman is trying not to become your mother. you’ve shaped me, quite literally. every time you look in the mirror, picking at your lumps of skin and calling it ‘fat’. you’re not but somehow you believe that.

growing older, i realize how you are also just a girl but did you have to project it all on me? controlling my plate. you say it’s too much, i’ll live miserably like you if i do partake. no wonder i’m full on crumbs.

mommy’s pet.

you’ve raised me well. even in my resentment, i circle back to your very being. everything seems to lead back to you and it is so taboo to talk about it because society doesn’t know what to do with it. where do i put it? where do i put the hatred and understanding? how do i hold those two truths? what do i know about holding?

i knew this wouldn’t last

i always know. it’s always in the back of my mind and still i hold on. if i just keep giving myself over and over. tweaking and adjusting and erasing and shrinking. versions and versions of me all audition for permanence. anything that’ll make her stay. anything that’ll make me less of you maybe then, i’d be enough for her.

but fuck you don’t you leave me here

my hands hesitantly hover over the send button and my mouth shudders with words forming a lump in my throat. please stay, please be different. i hope i am not imagining this. i hope i am not over-romanticizing it. i hope my feelings of you don’t ruin this with her.

you told me not to call you mommy, so don’t mind if i call her. and i still don’t know if i’m loving her or learning you again.