Almost

When someone asks what I’m afraid of

I offer them the known.

I hand them the harmless things.

–

Drowning.

Burning alive.

Falling.

–

The polite fears.

The kind you can outgrow.

–

Not being alone.

Becoming my mother.

Loving someone like my father.

–

The ocean is acceptable.

No one flinches when you say wave.

–

You can tell me to face that.

To learn to swim.

Swimming steals the ocean’s power.

–

They flinch when you say mother.

–

Becoming my mother has no lesson.

Forgiving her doesn’t change her.

Killing her in my mind changes me.

–

Loving someone like my father

is pressing the blade into my own eye

and calling it love

while the room goes dark.

–

Every man is him.

Almost.

–

If he leaves —

he’s too small for the weight of me,

for the responsibility of knowing someone

and not turning that knowledge into a weapon.

–

If he stays —

his mind lives behind a locked door,

words and actions

never touching.

–

So I “choose” alone.

–

I grew up with my mother.

I survived her.

–

I grew up without my father.

I survived him.

–

Alone,

I meet them both in myself.

–

The temper I swore I’d never carry.

Arms raised before impact. Meant to guard —

inflicts instead.

Feelings swallowed for someone else’s comfort.

–

Then the spark —

When no one notices what I buried for them.

–

I say I am not them.

–

But my voice sharpens.

My patience thins.

My silence stretches.

–

I am my mother.

I am my father.

–

There is no witness to dispute it.

–

And like them,

I am alone.

–

Some days I wish I were only afraid of water.

Of fire.

Of falling.

–

Instead,

my fears have my handwriting.

My reflexes.

My bones.

–

It was generous,

this inheritance.