I Hate Who I Am Today (And Tomorrow)

Sometimes it’s difficult to close my eyes at night.

As if a marionettist is cupping my cheek, pushing furrows into my brow and squeezing my eyelids closed, tight enough to peel until my forehead aches.

When my eyes glue shut for long enough, staticy patterns bob and dip in my vision until they swirl and mold into my mother and I am opening the garage door.

Breathing in the scent of tar, marlboro blues, and my mothers freshly-washed hair.

If I inhale again I am my mother and a grainy substance is tucked neatly into a line on the toliet paper holder of the bathroom stall, my hall pass dangling from my fingers and grazing the smooth skin of my calves every so often.

I glance towards the wooden boards of my little sisters bed and manuver my body to face the opposite wall across from me, as I pull my comforter up to my shoulders and twist my legs until their wrapped around eachother, the bed tipping slightly from such movement.

My hand slowly wraps around the door knob, cold with condensation making my palm slick and wet.

I look over to my little cousin and younger sister, I feel another onslaught of giggles creep up my throat as I shoo Becca’s hand away from my chest.

As the film from such a change in lighting lessons, my mothers nostrils flare in my direction as powder lightly flutters back onto the tray it originated with delicacy my mothers eyes don’t seem to hold.

If I fail to omit carbon from my lungs, sometimes I puff out my cheeks and swish vigorously like im drinking salt water my mother brought me in my orange and green sippy cup as a child to convince me to allow my sinuses to clear up,

When my chest falls and rises slightly out of tune not a word is said.

Not a word is said when I wake up to the screech of an ambulance tumbling through the streets, my hair stuck wryly to my face and pillow slightly damp below my neck.

You get in the car the next day, you’re thirteen and you fumble with your backpack strap as your step mom tells you your mothers in the hospital due to an overdose directly after getting off the bus.

The kitchen reeks of cigarettes but you take a drunken seat even if your nose contorts in pain, your mother is laughing when your aunt tells her you had a little-too-much to drink at the party.

She gives you a stern look, and calls you an idiot, and your uncle chants and points at your rosy nose and pink cheeks, but your fifteen and kids make mistakes sometimes.

Now, the best time to do drugs when your mother does drugs is when she’s too high to realize your high too.

Her arm wraps around my shoulder, and she stares up at the TV, chortling about how staged this reality show is, but you notice the screen bounces across her bubbly and bright eyes, and the way her two front teeth protrude her lips just slightly when she smiles.

You tell her you love her, and that you wouldn’t trade her for any other mom in the world, and when she looks down at you she sees a child with a wobbly grin and pin-point, shaky pupils.

She plants a kiss on your forehead, she whispers,“I love you so much honey.”

And when you tuck your head against her chest, and wrap your arm around her boney frame, when your eyes close this time instead of seeing your mother you see yourself.

And instead of stumbling around the kitchen after work you stumble against the lockers of the 300 hall, and your nostrils rattle everytime you inhale.

And your not the thirteen year old that smoked weed for the first time at your friends neighbors house while dripping pool water the towel couldn’t dry from your bikini, but you now hear your grandmothers visceral sobs as she calls your doctor to get checked in immediately for the second time,

And sometimes when the world turns slow enough, you look into the shards of glass you call a mirror and your mother waves to you from the other side, only now you are unshrinking.

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