Dear forgiving

Dear you,

Sometimes I wonder if your hands are still bleeding.

if the glass from my bedroom window is still stuck between your pointer finger and thumb.

When you taped explosives on your tongue a kissed the walls and ceiling,

The windows broke inward.

From the abandoned widows peek I saw the trail of blood dripping from your feet as you disappeared into the mountains.

You didn’t mean to make such a mess of things.

I think a lot about the plastic flowers on our kitchen table.

How I watered them every morning,

How I feed them to the sun with the same eagerness of water filling its lungs with paper boats.

How I much I believed in you and your redemption.

Sometimes I think about the flowers they planted in Hiroshima.

How they were seeded to breath in the radiation

The way they must have longed to swallow the pain they couldn’t prevent.

I wonder if the sunflower I planted in my mother’s stomach when I was 7 is still taking root

If it is still wrapped around her ribs and breathing clean air into her heart

Thinking

Just in case

Just in case.

I remember the way she picked veins from her skin to keep you grounded.

You woke up every morning and challenged the sun,

Threw your gauntlet on the marble floor and grew surprised when it caught flame.

I would trust my mother’s heart in the hands of Icarus’ before I would trust it in yours.

Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night,

 I wonder if you’re standing by your window

Looking out at the shiny homes and neon smiles

I wonder if while I’m staring at the flashing red of the clock on my windowsill reading 5:12

You are staring at this letter.

Staring at pictures you have hanging on your wall,

I wonder if you sometimes break the glass and let your finger bleed.

Just to remember what you thought family felt like,

Like being drained by splinters you couldn’t swallow when you were young.

More than anything I think about how much I rarely think about you.

How days and weeks will go by and your name doesn’t enter my head.

Yet somedays I still find you in my poetry,

My treasure box under my bed,

The lines between my mother’s hands

The spaces next to my favorite books.

Maybe I want to send you boxes of hate but sign it thank you.

Feel you hold me in your arms but leave with them still tucked in my back.

I hope you know the house is healed.

The glass has forgiven the walls for swooning to your kiss.

I have healed,

So has she.

I hope you know longer stain your toung when you try to lick your wounds

I hope you still challenge the sun.

But I hope the scars are still there,

I hope they remind you of all the things you let burn.

Clean the blood from the carpet

Tend to your roses

You are not done.