My Mom’s Mom

Dear nana,

I never liked you.

Nobody likes a 70 something tattle tale,

A gray haired woman who calls parents every time herr grandchildren didn’t give her attention,

Spinning stories, how spiders build their web traps that are meant to entangle the helpless.

Promising all the children sweets like the greedy witch with a pastry house,

Fattening us all up to devour, mercilessly.

Stealing candy was below you, you said

Yet you continued to steal our trust in family, time and again.

You always went out of your way to call me two-faced

Blaming a 7 year old child of manipulation,

When you were the only siren leading blind men to cold graves in the family.

I never liked you

My parents divorced, my life snapping in two like chopsticks

And you took this opportunity to pick me apart,

Peeling away a child’s skin to instil patience, mistrust, and silence.

While in the process teaching me fear,

As if it were an inborn instinct,

Fear your family your lessons stated,

Trust and you won’t survive, your actions spoke louder than your words.

I never liked you

You are the reason people scare me now,

The reason I can’t speak up in a conversation,

The reason I cower from my own opinions.

Everytime I open my mouth I hear your voice in my head

Ringing like a fire alarm,

Painful like nails on a chalkboard,

Echoing like a gunshot in a empty city.

Two-faced

Two-faced

Two-faced

In child friendly terms, a traitor.

You like to blame your grandchildren for everything:

They stay away from your house like the haunted house in the horror movies

And you threaten them like the villains in every cartoon

Yet when the 7 year old children hide from you,

you blame them, and comfort yourself with the idea of, “kids are cruel”

With your lies and ugly smile.

I never liked you,

I never will.

Nana you are a horrible, manipulative person and,

because of you I will do the one thing you always yelled and waved knives around discouraging,

I will tattoo that word to my wrist so every day I remember

That there are horrible people like you in the world too.

- Sincerely

One of the children you messed up.