holes we won’t fix

I hate coming home. Nothing has changed. There’s still a hole in the door the shape of a smushed angel wing. My mom gives me a hug as warm as a shadow. Her eyes are an essay and her dreams are golden like the eyes of a werewolf howling something we’ve already forgotten. She taught me that falling in the palm of promises was like bathing in decorated lies. From her I learned to build a temple of trust made of eyelashes.

My traumas speak and when I come home they scream as if they’ve missed me. I reminisce of the summers where we all had to stretch our happiness like the last dollar. As a kid, I didn’t understand pain so I reached for God but only grazed His beard. I used my blood as a blanket. I sniffed a line of letters. I wrote of dying then cleaned the words from underneath my fingernails. I carved the word love on my thighs so if Lauryn Hill ever asked me about love I could tell her that I could at least spell it. 

I stare at the hole in the door as my mom babbles about motherly things. She mentions my step dad. This is her way of telling me that she still talks to him. I ponder if my mom hasn’t fixed the hole in the door yet because it’s her way of staying faithful to her pain. She tells me how he’s changed. Nothing here has changed. I go outside to stare at the sun, hoping to find the story behind its pupils. Just as the sun begins to speak, I cry from the brightness. I tell myself that tonight the moon will sing me a lullaby and I will dream a dream where holes are shaped like heaven.