Your glasses left indents on your nose

Like your words did to my persona

It was something in your hands

Wrinkled from holding on to loves lost and far gone

You liked to choke the life out me

Your fingers drew conversations out of the air

And accusations flew like birds in the sky of our bedroom

I could never tell if you hated me

Or if the only way you’d ever learned how to love

Was to chase those who weren’t there

And push away the only ones who cared

Tell me why did you become this way grandmother?

Because I became your kind of woman

The kind of woman to run after boys who pushed me down into the ground

I traded you in for hands that held guitars

And plucked notes out of my heart

I traded our bedroom for backrooms

And the flowers that grew from our garden

For cheap dates and bruised egos

Theirs hands were rough and strong

And I sought from them the way you never held me

The indents on your nose

Became the indents they left on my body

I never asked you how to wash off the fingerprints they left behind

Or how to scrub away the memories

At nights I sometimes confuse their voice for yours

Because “you’re worthless” “You’re weak” “I’m stronger than you”

Have a way of merging together and knocking you on your knees

I cannot look in the mirror

Because the little girl that tried so hard to love you

Is reflected back to me

And I do not know how to hold her

Or how to tell her that everything will be all right

Because you have passed on to me your curse

And it echoes somewhere in my mind

Every time I think it’s okay to be good to myself

And it warns me to stay away

From the men that will know how to love me