My Mother Knew

(For My Momma)

My Mother Knew

You're my mother

You could have only been my mother

I trace my skin back to you

The veins that ride the back of my hands

Taught me how to grasp those I love

With the tinies fingers

You wrapped me into someone familiar

Every day I belonged more to you and

less to myself

In the silence of your womb

I was quieter in the journey of uncertainty

Leaning against the walls of your flesh

I pushed against

I asserted myself then

And less every day from the day of my

birth

You see you molded my thoughts

Into pieces of the mirrors of your

brokenness,

Until we embraced the jagged edges

together

Until the blood became like Kool-Aid

I learned to trace the shape of my soul

from the marriage of my parents

I trapped the slivers of happiness into

a cocoon

When I was little I knew that conceding

would save me from so much suffering

I learned to keep the deepest things

buried under the disguise of a polite

demeanor

Beating people with our fists is not a

solution, it is a momentary victory over

words you could not argue against

In the end, the truest words win, we battle

against all of the lies we have woven

between us

To dismantle and tear down the webs that

have enshrouded who we are

Because we are really cowards

To say what we really feel

To say we have become a habit

A habit of bleeding into the same cup

My mother told me to defend the roots

of my being

By keeping a dagger between myself

and another,

if someone had to be stabbed it

sure as hell wasn't going to be me

Women have to grow a protective

conscience, a smarter instinct of living,

as our bodies are the ones that can become

invaded

It is our job to keep just anyone from

going inside

We protect the gold, the gold of

motherhood,

That is the motherlode, that must not

be eroded by the outside

Our lungs have to scream like banshees

to warn our hearts what must stay away

We are the trumpets to scream ourselves

awake

From seductions and men that lie with

words sewn into their tongues

Never believe the words

The words never tell the truth

The words have tiny teeth on them

To chew to the center

My mother taught me that words are blown

away with the wind

Words do not stay

Words leave the mouth

To begin another deception

While they are still speaking to you

My mother had black eyes on good days

and on bad days her eyes rained

She tried to show me what love was

But daddy showed me what love wasn't

I learned the words meant least of all

But to taste the butter on them

Was the food we all want

Women do not want sex at all

Women want the secrets

Women hunger for what it is that

makes a man care

They only settle for sex

I only settled for sex

And I never want to have it again

There is something lost in the translation

of love and sex

And the power that momma said we lost

every time "nos acostamos,"

From the moment he buttoned his pants

The seconds to keep him nailed to the

bed began

When he ripped out the nails, it didn't

hurt him

Until I discovered I was the one who was

nailed to the situation

Momma told me this would happen

But I didn't listen

I never had the habit of listening

Momma was wise

With everything she had endured

She knew that men hate whores

Momma was a virgin when she married

daddy, between that time and the time

daddy left her heart for another woman

while they were still in the same bed

She had become obsolete,

So, when daddy put his fist through her

fresh face, it was really a signature

he was signing

of his departure

He signed his love for her away long

before then

And I witnessed it too

And I signed too

I signed with my tears

That I understood what was happening

We maintained the illusion of being a

family

For his parents I think

He hated all of us

He loved all of us, and he hated all of us

We were baggage to him

Baggage to what he wanted

My mother wore this on her tiny body

My brothers don't understand her

Because they are men

She was the victim, but I know

They see her as a shrew

They don't say it

But they don't see her either

The words they text her

The words they can't even say

But have to write down

It's the same, but they are caught in their

own marriages

Instead of fighting

Or, maybe they are really happy

But I doubt it

What is happiness?

But a word to us

A word to believe

A lie we tell our hearts

Mi Madre sabia

She knew that every heart

That grew inside of her is connected

Even if the boys are too stupid to know

They still belong to her

We still belong to each other

Something, daddy refuse to accept

Until he no longer had momma and he was

with another woman did he realize he loved

My mother

Bloodstains never disappear

Water dries up

But even in a crime scene,

The blood is always discovered

It speaks louder than anything

My mother knew this, and she spoke

it to me when I was still inside her womb.

(written June 30, 2018, Taken from My Mother Knew and other poems by Matty B. Duran on sale on Amazon.com)