the only wound I have won’t stop throbbing.

   I remember it so distinctly (dreadfully) that I can’t believe I’d once forgotten at all.(dreadfully distinct)

  There was not a cloud in this most blue of all skies. I stood on the cement patio, we lived high up yet I have no memory of ever going up the stairs. Down below, my mother was hanging the linens. The incredibly blue sky, The white linens flowing in the wind, my mother’s black *black* skin. Such stark contrast in elements interlinked to create such a moment of unreality (interlinked). 

  I called down.

“ma, you left a pretty bad scar this time!”

“good!” she responded.”let it remind you not to misbehave next time!” 

I don’t even remember what I had done.  I’m not sure that it matters.

I have flashes of other memories from that building, that I haven’t thought of in the last fifteen years or so. There was a man who everyone told me was mad and dangerous, looking back on the memories, he was harmless, and just suffering from some affliction. I was beaten once for asking him for a piece of paper from his notebook so I could draw on it. He did his best to protest this beating, but who would listen to a mad man? 

   In another memory, I was dragged naked, kicking and screaming to the washroom. Back home it was believed that your stomach needed to be washed out and cleaned regularly, with a mixture of ginger root, along with various herbs and spices, administered via something like a turkey baster being shoved up you know where. 

  If you were sick especially, it was believed to act as some sort of a cure all, it mostly worked I think, or at least helped a lot. 

 I was sick very often as a child. 

I think that first memory I recanted, about the blue sky and the linens and my mother’s black black  skin is my favorite memory. (what’s it like to hold the hand of someone you love?) It’s *colored* in so much surreality, and such a simple exchange, in one moment, encapsulates so much of my experience in this life. Recalling it last night rendered me utterly senseless, I ran out of the house and spent a long while on a cold park bench. I had been gripped by fear, anxiety and paranoia suddenly. Bewildered and beside myself I spent the rest of the night shaking and confused. 

When it comes to fight, flight, freeze or fawn, I’ve always been the type to fight. A friend asked me during a talk, “if you could put the weight down, would you?” I said “Nope.”  She asked why, I responded “I feel good for being strong enough to carry it” or something like that. 

I don’t feel strong at all, I was in the corner shaking, crying, and afraid. I laughed about it a lot last night, at how pathetic I seemed to my own self. 

“MOMMY ISSUES ANIKICHAD BREAKING DOWN ON MOTHER’S DAY!”

I roared. 

The universe was winking at me again. 

When I say they broke me, I don’t mean that I’m damaged. Damaged things can be repaired. 

♪ and in the middle of the ceeeeeelebratiooons, I break doooooowwwwwwn ♫

i forgive my mother.