© Transracial Abductees
Design and hosting by Emi.

home :: abductees speak! :: nobody ever said loving was easy

the coffee's percolating
steam comes steady
thru the rice cooker
mom is in her sunglasses
and visor
prepared
to hang up laundry
and I sit, frigid from sluggish blood,
in the blue
union jacket
that belonged to my mother's father
dead of heart failure
in January.

as I transfer
beans to
glass jars
("Has that stuff fermented yet?"
dad fearfully asks,
wrinkling his nose)
I tell mom,
"I never, um... I never stopped
loving you thru our
conflicts"
she says, dismissively, pert on her mother perch,
"it was never about 'loving.'"
my heart tightens its nylon cinch around
its dehydrated abdomen, sucks
in air.

we are still hard.

martyrdom and attrition.
memory and contemplation.
faced with our
contempt, fear, pain,
we smart in the (m)other's
energy.
she refuses to
be
here.

she is right.
apologies are no longer sufficient.
It is now that
we choose to
be sucked in,
to feel and
suffer thru being,
through loving �|
or we break apart.

She says,
"I think we should just stop talking
altogether."
She fumbles, trying to find the words,
"What...s going on�cbetween us?"
as though it were a locked box
somewhere "out there"
as though we had not
jointly created it.

"change isn't supposed to hurt," she says. "says who?" I ask.