honey & lime

family weekend  

i sit across from my mother

in the middle of a steakhouse

in muncie, indiana

 

i don’t know if she knows this:

but i don’t want to be her daughter

& she doesn’t know that I know this:

but she doesn’t want to be my mother

at least not like this

 

she works at kroger,

dreams of escaping her life for once & for all

she left me when I was a child, not once, but twice

once for music city, another time for palm trees

& beaches in cali, homelessness was something

she became used to & something i feared

 

we dare not speak this truth into being. instead,

 

we mask our pain

play make believe

eat at restaurants

we can’t afford

 

order steak & chicken

fried pickles & mozzarella sticks

even though we should probably share an entrée

nothing but the best, this is a special occasion after all

 

i eat all of the bread & butter,

order a cocktail to my mother’s dismay

because i need a drink

to deal with this bullshit.

 

she complains about not having a good job

& her master’s degree classes

& her dumb professor

i don’t want to clean toilets anymore, she says.  

that’s not my fault, i tell her

why can’t you care about me for once?

 

we talk about my life for two minutes

& then she’s back where she started,

blaming the world for her circumstances.

 

she tells me how open-minded she is,

although she cringes every single time i mention

my future girlfriend or wife. she made me cry

in a bookstore once because of it.

 

i pay half of the bill even

though i’d prefer not to, i told her to visit

even though i didn’t really want to see her,

thought it was a kind gesture;

that kind gesture put us both through hell.

 

usually, we say our i love you’s

& our i miss you’s,

but this time, it didn’t end like that

i slam her car door, storm

off to my apartment, & don’t look back.