my dreams want to fly across rooftops like superheroes. they’re tired of hiding underneath my bed, entangled in crumpled beginnings of new worlds scribbled on recycled paper. they want to conquer bad guys like sadness and fear rather than envision eating your lips off with extra strength bleach. i know it’s bad, momma, but i want to scrape you out of my life like wallpaper. i want to kill your words before they hit my insides like a hammer tap tapping hate.
momma, i made your favorite: chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting.
i got another masters degree for you.
i brought the ocean home with me so you could remember the way daddy used to smell.
i fit into my size two jeans from middle school you know the ones you saved for all those years to remind me of when i used to be good enough for you.
will you love me now?
my dreams want to find other dreams to join forces with and create world joy. they’ve given up on pleasing you, momma. you’re never happy. you’re sharp like a scissor and hungry like a tornado when you tear my dreams apart by their seams and swallow them whole.
don’t dream so big, i told my dreams. i don’t mean that. that’s something momma would say. i scratched under their chins and rested my cheek in their fur. i love you. i don’t want us to go out there and see that everyone is momma. they nodded. and we don’t want you to stay here and think that you are momma, they said.
we sank into my full size mattress and listened to the usual bed sores that caused the frame to groan in pain. we took ten breaths in, then ten breaths out until our senses became still and the mattress felt like a hammock floating back and forth in a breeze. we didn’t break the cycle. we didn’t ask to fly or soar or leave but when we woke up we were covered in sand and daddy was hugging us. maybe we never really woke. maybe we dreamed our dreams into reality. or maybe a father scooped his sleepy daughter into his arms and finally made good on his promise to come back for her.
momma, i’ve left you. will you love me now?
-lissa
ahhh it feels so good to post again. i can’t wait to catch up on everyone’s blogs when i get in from work tomorrow. (i start my new job tomorrow yippee.)
An emotional comeback, lissa! I thought your post from the other day (yesterday?) was also very honest too, an earthy, soulful honesty.
It’s hard to write about trauma and scars, but you’ve done it well, your writing is packed with metaphors, like eating lips off with extra strength bleach, wow!
Yippee, it feels fantastic to read your posts again. This is amazing, so original, so beautifully made, mindbogglingly wordsnatchingaway breathtakingly brilliant it is. You are Lissa!, the best. (and good luck with the new job)
This piece ends with a note of true freedom.
Fabulous……wonderful…….really well done…….And very good luck, you’ve probably just started your shift!
the relationship of mother and child is “supposed” to be effortless, endless, all forgiving all powerful.. and when it isn’t
you portrayed the longings of a child for that love here so well…. it is haunting…
Lissa, you are SO good!
I loved the animation you provided your dreams. This was wonderful.
This prose poem is so packed with vivid images, I’m licking my lips! Fantastic!
This is a beautiful piece… A daughter always trying to please her mother? Something many are going through…
I’m glad you’re back.
Your portrait of an internal struggle is so striking. Well done.
love this–absolutely!
Your poem is breathtaking in her emotinal heart. This
desire to be good enough for mother, her every word/
glance carrying such power…it’s too much for any
of us.
beautiful and sad, the longings of one parent’s approval, the rescue into the other parent’s arms, I can picture a child waiting for hope even in her dreams
I think this is my favorite piece of yours so far. So powerful. The brilliant imagery of wallpapered pain. Brilliant.
The first thing I’ve ever read of yours, and it captured my heart. Well done.
Beautiful, poignant, haunting. If one parent doesn’t love you, where do you turn when the other isn’t there?
This is heartbreaking, but beautiful.
Man, I was pretty sure I’d left a comment here. :/
Maybe it was eaten by wordpress?…
I loved this post!
powerful and true. brilliant!
it is beautifu lissa…especially the conversation format complements yr voice well.. how the absent blessings of mothers can rob daughters souls and they don’t even know it… how poignant you have spoken… do you think mothers do that intentionally? there were so many images that catch one’s eye, as food for thought, for me it was bringing back the ocean…
lissa, isn’t it amazing when you take away the “writing for others” how the writing just bursts out?! You tagged this “flash fiction” yet it touched a chord in my creative non-fiction mind—smothered by parental disappointment and expectation. What does it take to be free?
Hope the new job is going well. J xo.
lissa lissa! *cuddles*
Lovin’ on you, Lissa, sending positive spirituality
your beautiful way.
This is so good. I love powerful writing and you pulled this off perfectly.
Hello, again. I miss you. And I miss your writing too. You are a wonderful human type creature and a fantastically brilliant writer of very writerly writings and you work much too hard. Hope you are smiling.
Hope you’re doing well……I’ll e you.
i miss you lissa :(
c’mon girl–come out and play
why
did you
fly away beauty?
My google reader just lied to me and said you were back!
*single tear*