Waking Up Emma

Today, I poured Irish cream

into mom's chipped bulldog mug,

funny, age doesn't realize it can't live

without Irish cream

as a bit of vodka in juice,

drinking four cups of coffee

to sterilize the moment

Sweet Jesus, I need to accept my role

as mother

to carry inside my womb as perpetuity

days mixed with iron and clay

to love the drips of blood falling along

the way

not as sorrow but as fact

the life sentence I am married to

affords consolation of breathing

into the lips of a child who cannot

always breathe

forces me to escape this charade

slipping on masks as deliberate

I am used to sitting in this theater

alone

until I can begin to memorize the right

dialogue

for my daughter Emma,

can it be that simple without an

audience?

without popcorn as a drug

to feed the addictions of depression

as living?

Knowing each morning doesn't come

with a tub laced with gold

Waking up Emma

for another day of school

as another day of battle,

I foolishly reason if only the bus stop

weren't in the next damn county,

If I could carry her slumbering limbs

as a wounded casualty

to the bus stop as a hospital,

even if clumsily without dropping her

Every morning a somber reality

trying to wake someone from a coma

her eyelids impressed deeply

I see the shadows of her eyes

struggling in another life,

blinking and living someplace else,

the moment she forces them open

I can see there is a lot of living in

those nine-year old eyes

in the seconds her guard is down

I recognize those rusty eyes,

for a moment they are thirty-eight

We are two casualties in those bloody

trenches

trying to survive one more night

she doesn't recall that I am on her

side

but a mortal enemy

whose memories escaped through a

head wound that's been opened

Days deal with us cruelly

a sick joke of walking her to school

wired with a grenade inside her head

her explosive temperament

dismantling a bomb before it goes off

sadly blown to bits on the way to

school

the distance further antagonizes the

situation

I imagine myself a wearied prisoner of

war

forced on the ghost road to Bataan

kicking me in the back with her

emotions as a Billy club

God, I hate to think we are only two

enemies struggling

falling behind those trenches

with only muddy boots in the rain

splitting our lips

The constant descent from peace to

war

living with this is like that

having to put on armor all of the time

not sure when she's taken the pin out

of her grenade

my tears are more like bullets tearing

holes into my faith

thinking I'll never get through this

Then Emma holds her arms out

like an injured toddler whose fallen

I wrap her into my arms

like a mother hiding her baby from the

Gestapo

Not knowing when she will explode

like Mt. Vesuvius

burning me with a hot rage that spews

out of her

like lava it cuts through her without

mercy

dissolving her nine-year old flesh to

get to me

the anguish she must know

having this creature that playfully cuts

through her like a paper doll

she leaves herself so many times

peeling herself many more times

like the oranges she loves to eat

"The Illness"

that changes her from child

to violent man

from soft olive arms to calloused

tattoos

and murder

a room constantly tossed over by the

tornado living within

the disfigured elf that trashes

everything in its path

including me

barely floating on a piece of wreckage

words cannot describe the breaking

down of her space

and my space

and all of the spaces in between

people's sympathy thrown at me from

every direction

rude sandstorms

I've fallen into one of the many holes

in this room

we live in

she chases at me with her anger

the knife she uses to cut the air until it

can bleed

But her tears are like diamonds

precious and genuine is her sorrow

for blowing up the bridges between us

throbbing vein in the middle of her

forehead

a woman's aging throbs

distract her

frustrating her young world

the burden of those ancient sobs

she starts executing Barbies

by tossing the heads off of them

by becoming a dictator her fury

negates any civilized law

I am her shackled mother

arrested by this uncontrollable

apparition

of a misplaced anger

a sharp pendulum that pulls her into

two different directions at once

And just as quickly the earth stops

spinning

a sudden gesture

puppets fall without their puppeteer

to manipulate them

Time becomes a single bird in silent

flight

dawn finds me face down on some

battlefield

I am surrounded by the strewn of

corpses from the battle of her will

and mind

the ticking of the clocks lay mute

We are a piece of jagged light cutting

the earth into two pieces

hers and mine

forming the boundaries we must live

by

I sit up checking to see how much

shrapnel I've taken

afterward she's the enemy whose laid

down her weapon

and surrendered

waving that familiar white flag

with her whispers she has wrestled

her impulsive nature

to a secure corner of this room

weeping intensely with a pistol against

her temple

is the result of whipping yourself all

the time in this imaginary blender

in an uncertain hour

Emma releases all the emotions she's

held hostage

finally letting them go as P.O.W.'s

and the seasons people under

oppression cherish as true freedom

we bathe in the luxurious light of her

calm

until the door is violently kicked in

again

In between blinks and breaths

a mother enjoys her only child

God seems to love me when she loves

me

when she isn't stingy with her hugs

her smile invades me

Emma tries to fit in

but the rugged shape of her soul won't

let her fit in

the shape that doesn't fit into the

shapes of this world

there are pieces of her that are ripped

out and set aside

and left out

unable to be pushed through

Our hearts hold hands to form an

alliance

away from the world the universe has

petrified itself into

the fossilized sky ignores the wearied

travelers

that search the world for an entrance

For breakfast she takes lithium with

apple jacks

I am always hoping that the shape of

her mind

will change into smoother places

and I am always praying that the tiny

green pills of Prozac

will force the soldier she was born

with to retire

and transform her back into the little

girl

who owns the decapitated Barbies

(Taken from The Rage and Cyclops in my Blood by Matty B. Duran for sale on Amazon.com)