 The difficult person in my life that I pictured was my mother surprise and this Is a piece to her. I'm not sure if I'll ever give it to her, but it's to her I know we're in Hanukkah in Christmas time But this piece is called Mother's Day, and I'm gonna take my jewelry off because it's knocking on the podium Every once in a while you would get down on that olive shade carpet and play I loved this We would wrap books delicately with washcloths to make miniature beds and convert my bedroom shelves into a Barbie condominium With you my plastic roll models were kind to one another softening the shortcomings of the adults in our house Barbies would get dressed up for church and pray You would weave in one of your Sunday school lessons about forgiveness or the importance of a good wife Submitting to her Ken husband When I played alone my dolls would frantically rub their unformed genitals together and get knocked up You never talked to me about sex or how to create boundaries You tried raising an obedient wife instead got an independent woman who has collected her lessons elsewhere The first time I had sex. I may have violated my lover When my Mills College freshman dorm array was through hand hammering my virginity She rolled over and asked me to spoon her I thought that to spoon was to hungrily fuck a woman with your fingers in the shape of the common eating utensil So that's what I did. I remember cruising down I-90 in the least firebird on our way to redeem a stack of Coupons at the IGA We would turn off Christian radio and harmonize to father. I adore you. Don't make me sing it Or angels we have heard on high Try didn't gum tucked beneath our molars When you weren't depressed you would take me hiking in the fall through Hickson forest and we would collect leaves Oak maple elm just like the street names in our town You taught me that moss grows on the north side of the trunks, so I would always know where I was I Helped you pound thousands of little white crosses and to neat rows on the front lawn of first Lutheran Church on Main Street Each one represented an abortion that happened in our state that year. I believed what you believed those babies were murdered I transferred my profound sadness and anger into the satisfaction of puncturing the earth with white wooden spears Taking a few green blades of grass down with each one It took longer than my first girlfriend was comfortable with for me to come out to you Whenever you called the landline of our one bedroom apartment, she would roll her eyes and hand me the phone What's your roommates name again, hun? You'd ask and I'd tell you each time without correcting you She moved out a month before my courage arrived I waited until the last hour of the last day of your visit and you locked yourself in my Oakland bathroom and screamed My baby is gonna burn in hell When your airport shuttle arrived, I followed you down the exterior hall of my apartment building past the smell of cooked cabbage and paprie Paprika and the sound of too many people crammed into apartments When we got to the curb you slit open the van door pulled yourself inside looked me in the eye and said You may have forsaken him, but he has not turned his back on you Then you slam the door and the Bay Porter Express disappeared a hearse transporting unconditional love to its grave Sirens are sounding I hear voices. They are angry. They want to enter the gates of heaven and I won't let them They are not allowed. No, they cannot come inside. I cannot see them But I hear them red and blue lights swirl through the windows illuminating the front room and the blood Shards of broken glass on the floor become cobalt and crimson my feet are raw I've been barefoot all night. I lost one black flip-flop in a dark field and tossed the other I was running from the lesbians who own the bed and breakfast and the other kind woman who let me stay in her house After they fired me and told me I was crazy. I threw her PC out the window. I destroyed her island home We will not need the internet in the afterlife. It has caused the end of man and woman kind I did her a favor. I also ran from the man who picked me up on the side of the road Why are they trying to stop me? Don't they recognize the next Messiah? This is what Jesus must have felt like I forgive them for their sins. I love them. I love everyone You told me that my manic episode was God punishing me for being a lesbian He's warm and gentle and so familiar. He's touching my sadness holding it for me His palm and fingers draw the hardened shame and numb out of me a tender exorcism. I am softening I am coming alive. His hand is sending an electric pulse into my clitoris. I can smell the dirt on his wrist I want him to touch my face. I want my mouth to touch his mouth crooked nose arms cock I want to bite his eyebrow ring We stay like this for a while as if he's baptizing me from the opposite side of our booth Nina Simone Leonard Cohen the velvet underground and Sam Cooke have been serenading us from the jukebox He loaded it up. I noticed he chose mostly love songs Overdrinks we fill in the details of this lifetime. I tell him about my dad's polygamy His own dad left when he was young as well, but to be a film writer in LA. I Spill my tumbler of scotch We laugh and consider sucking it off the table with our mouths before we do indeed go for it The alcohol will kill whatever is growing on this wood and McCallan is expensive We don't get paid much doing manual labor at rock and rose landscaping. We are both drunk. He calls me a Claude I like this word. I Notice that I'm slippery between my legs while I'm alone inside the uptowns red painted graffiti bathroom stall I want him to touch me again everywhere anywhere. Please dear God is this really happening? When your prayers were answered and I started dating this man You told me it was my fault when he betrayed me because I wasn't ready to move in with him That probably would have been the best time to tell you I enjoyed strapping it on and sodomizing him You told me that God was punishing you for letting a man have sex with you when you were nine years old You said your punishment was delivered in the form of husbands The first a polygamist the second an alcoholic Pontiac salesman We were in the target parking lot with the heat on and the engine running when I told you You had a feeling something was happening during my summer spent in Montana, and you did nothing Were you wondering how I would pay for the sin of letting my stepmother do that to me? We exited the car and finished our last-minute holiday shopping. I Believe we deserve pleasure and healing over punishment You have never experienced an orgasm if you didn't believe masturbating was a sin. I would send you a self-massage tool Maybe your drunk husband could watch the Packer game and hold the Hitachi magic wand while you lie underneath it You are wrong. Your lifestyle is wrong Those are the last words you spoke to me We were standing barefoot in your suburban backyard still in our funeral blacks your own mother gone forever from this place Pain and death fears allowing the ugliest beast to surface I had already packed my bag changed my flight and turned my back on you It's Mother's Day, and I'm grieving for all women who have lost their mothers I am grieving for women who want to be mothers but are not I Am grieving for women who do not trust the intimacy required to create Partnerships and families because they are survivors of sexual abuse or assault. I am grieving for every miscarriage I am grieving for all women who are estranged from their mothers I am grieving for all mothers who are estranged from their children Especially when the unforgiving walls of religion come up against the realities of sexuality and gender I am grieving for incarcerated women who cannot be with their children and women whose children are incarcerated I am grieving for women of color who have lost their children to the hands of the police I am grieving for any woman who may have seen those little white crosses on the front lawn of first Lutheran in 1990 and felt even a sliver of shame or guilt if there is a God my beautiful women We are loved