In the wake nothing settles, nothing's lost
but there is that nothingness we have come to know.
So opaque, so white, so familiar and familial, liar for
the sake of it. You liar. My mother, my father, myself.
You liar, why can't the truth be enough?
Please don't lie and please don't tell the truth.
Whatever you do, please me, why dont you?

you are of one mind.
the one that used to be
with clarity, focus and insight
and the one that forgets in seconds,
remembers the neighborhood as a place of single origin,
the family of five decades ago.
when faced with change you are angry and feral,
hostility a defense mechanism as primal as the days
before fire when survival of the fittest left the vulnerable
unprotected. oh mother, how can you say these things to me
with a viciousness I have never witnessed?
how do you refuse father the help he needs?
you say he will become an invalid (at 102)
how do we strip you of your identity when we have to make this move?

This life a series of breaths,
always short of
long
or otherwise disproportionate to
the actual experience. Why is the
life force so compelling to control?
Or why is it so elusive?

She knew it all but we all knew she didn't. She could lift the Empire State building with one hand. She could let it fall and not look back to see where it landed. Where is she now? When he died his spirit left his body, a shell, nothing left. When she died she never left but now i can't find her.

Is it possible to be born from the same DNA? Is there anything that really connects us beyond the fact that we have to be connected by our struggle to survive? Who the fuck are we anyway?

This thing happens again and again and I can't wrap my mind around it. Lack of trust. Lack of support. Lack of intimacy. Lack of...all things that really matter.

I will go to sleep tonight, hoping to dream a better outcome.