written for challenges, Feb 2005 |
I have hated you like I have hated no one else in all the world Through all the years of my life I have tried to destroy you For I truly hated you. Oh, it wasn’t just dislike. The emotion was far deeper. For me, hating you was a passion, Wishing you dead was my deepest desire. But how could I kill you who were already dead? I could only do so by destroying myself. And I very nearly did. “How could you! How could you?” I raged in my heart. “How could you bring me into the world And then hate me?” “Why?” “Why was I born?” To be the object of hate? To be abused, to be hurt, To be lied to and kicked around By the world because I was me? Did it give you some perverse pleasure, hating me? Did you think you could hurt your own mother By hating me because she loved me? Was it because I was a dirty little half-breed? “Why?” The choice was yours. You chose my father, so why did you hate him? You did some terrible things to me in my life, And I grew up hating myself. Hating the stupid, Dirty thing that I was. And all along I thought I loved you. When you died my sister wrote Beautiful love poems for you. When you died, there was hardly a ripple in my life. I didn’t know you. And you didn’t want to know me. How I longed to have a mother who loved me. ME! Her first-born child. Her beautiful daughter. How I still long to ask you the questions in my heart. How I long to say “I forgive you,” And to hear you say “I love you.” But that isn’t possible For you are dead. I can only feel pity And sorrow for someone Who had so much to resolve In their own life. The only thing I can do Is to forgive myself For hating you For hating me, For hating myself. The only thing I can do Is to let myself live, To let myself become The person only I can be. The only thing I can do Is say “I am sorry, mother, I do love you”, even though You were my enemy. My mother was killed in a car accident when I was 10 years old. We were hit by a drunk driver. Through no fault of her own she left many things unresolved in her life. |