A Love Poem to My Mother
Location
I.
I have always thought love was a lesbian,
but I never told my father. I swallowed guilt
each time he apologized for his signature
on carbon copies of divorce papers.
And I should've told him, they weren't
supposed to ever get married in the first place.
II.
I watch my mother send every stereotype
of a male and female up into ashes. With
eyes the color of frozen fog, she sits in
the front with her girlfriend, a woman who
uses laughter to stitch the cuts of what it took
for her to get here. And for the very first time
I witness the most rebellious love. When they
kiss, it is like the sky envies their affection and
throws firebombs, burning the world near
them. Mimicking two airplanes, their engine
lips collide in sync. Their bodies compress
like a rib cage in the throat of a car crash.
III.
Some people feel they have to die in order
to live freely. 13 year olds open their flesh
with a bullets after school. Jump off bridges.
Hanging themselves in dorm rooms and from
barn rafters. Twitch from tree branches. These
are martyrs with hope boring into the bare palm
of their hands like spoiled acid. Surrendering to
a battle they never had control over anyway.
IV.
After leaving her girlfriend behind, my mother
remains in the car, wrecked. I look at the stars
and how they tuck under the sky’s skin and how
the arms of a moon can grab the body of a cloud.
It mocks their relationship. This is the love
that people kill themselves for. If anything,
I have learned not to ever question the
validity of vows that two women have to offer.
I wonder, if they have not legalized gay,
does that mean the love taught in my household is illegal?