- Part I -

If it didn’t cut your tongue then

perhaps you didn’t say his name properly.

I want to write only about him,

in singularity,

dissociated from everything else, and everyone else.

And the more I think of it

the more I realize that it’s impossible.

Absolutely impossible.

I can’t think of him more than my

Mother’s husband.

I can’t talk of him without talking about my mother.

I can’t talk of his existence without

talking of my mother’s pain.

A good daughter always loves her father more.

The words sit rancid in my mouth –

both –

daughter,

and father.

A good daughter always aspires to be like her father.

A good woman always wants a man like her father.

A woman always suffers like her mother.

- Part II -

The only kind of love I am capable of

is one that stays between my legs.

One which doesn’t involve talking about

childhood, and a future.

One which starts with an itch and ends

in an explosion when clarity re-enters.

One where you pick your pants up from the floor

and leave before the dawn cracks.

One where you touch me everywhere except

for my heart.

- Part III -

“But why?”

Because it’s a choice I can make,

unlike every other ones.

A life is forming in me

more and more every day.

A life that doesn’t have a choice

to be or not to be formed.

Where does one learn to be a mother

when trying desperately to run away from everything that

her own mother is?

“But why don’t you want it?”

because after failing as a daughter,

a sister, a lover, and a friend,

I can choose to not fail

as a mother.