I should never have loved you
like a mother or wanted
to take the sweets away:
You’ll ruin
your dinner or grocery shopped
and cleaned house with only
two hands rubber gloves sponges
or charged trips we took
to credit cards with small limits:
that Valentine’s
motel no pool
netted cheap black lingerie stilettos
disabled fire alarm pizza pills
I was too young for motherhood
too much drinking too many
drugs not enough eating sleeping
too much sleeping not enough laughing
unfinished homework driving
to school home from school
seldom fucking it took
cocaine to get a sensuous touch
to my muff the amphetamines
kept your cock soft as if
having sex with the canal
you came through attached to
the womb where you incubated
I gave birth to a six-foot baby
I’m barely five feet
I held you like her
your arms a noose
your limbs limp
too weak to stand
I carried you all the way.
