My Mother Says If She’s Such a Monster, Explain
The blank nothing I asked for. The blank too much. The blank
breakfast in bed when I was a teenager and should’ve made my own.
Her entrance my alarm clock, bright Wake up, sleepyhead!
served with apple slices and peanut butter toast. Caretaking
as martyrdom. Caretaking as an excuse to yell later,
when my leisurely breakfast made us late. Hurry! Did I want her
to get fired, did I want her to die driving a hundred on the highway?
Look at all she did for me. The blank all she did for me.
The blank a paper heart, decoration and display. I wanted her
to buy my book and read it, ask me questions. Instead, the blank——
buying twenty copies, mailing them to all my old teachers.
I wanted her to respect my teaching. Instead, the blank——
interrupting my classes to present homemade cookies. The blank
sending roses on Valentine’s Day because my boyfriend didn’t.
He made dinner every night, his arms the only safety I’d ever known,
but no flowers. She signed the roses Your Secret Admirer.
Didn’t she see why that was weird? No——the blank
just wanting me to feel special. The blank because my boyfriend
obviously didn’t love me enough. The blank because my boyfriend
must be sleeping with someone else like her husband was.
The blank never apologizing for being wrong. The blank
loving me. No such thing as too much. The blank telling me when
I have a daughter, I’ll understand. The blank why I never had a daughter.
Estranged Pantoum
CW: SA
Revisiting the mainstay TV shows of our youth means
seeing every problematic moment, finally the right prescription.
Revisiting memories means truly seeing them, too.
The shows and memories haven’t changed; I’ve changed.
I see every problematic moment, finally. The right prescription,
a therapist who says I am allowed to leave my mother.
My mother hasn’t changed; I’ve changed.
When I was young and told people my boyfriend hurt me,
my friends said I was allowed to leave him,
but my mother said at least her boyfriend never raped her.
When I was young and told people my mother hurt me,
my friends minimized my feelings. They couldn’t believe
my mother used my rape to defend her boyfriend
or that she was cruel after my father died.
My friends minimized my feelings. They couldn’t believe
that when I asked my mother to stop speaking to me
about my father’s death so casually,
she responded Fine, bitch. Start the tape, bitch.
I didn’t ask my mother to stop speaking to me
that way. I sat in silence, pretended this was the first time
she responded like that. It was fine. I started the tape,
General Hospital, a mainstay TV show of my youth.
That way, we sat in silence, pretended this was quality time.
Onscreen, Laura doted on Luke, her husband who once raped her.
Estranged Golden Shovel
The final straw: my mother canceled Christmas. We
had reservations, but her partner told her no, Covid a real
threat——three years after the pandemic. Talking down, cool
tone——I can hear him, though I didn’t hear him. We
don’t talk; he talks through my mother. She once left
a worse man, a man who took free high school
senior portraits for his daughter’s prettiest classmates. We
didn’t fall apart over that man, though his lurk
lasted years. Why end it now? Timing, I guess, late
enough in my life to understand how love should look. We
used to battle, meaning I’d say nothing and she’d strike.
Her morph, her contort, before and after, she cut straight
through me——you bitch, you piece of shit. We
went to counseling for a year, but she’d always sing
the same refrain: I don’t remember. How to atone for sin
without owning sin? She met this new man, moved away. We
stopped counseling, faded from each other, tether thin
and fraying. Best not to notice——call this water gin,
these rhinestones diamonds. Even relief in some ways. We
could find balance: lose the sheet music, become jazz.
But he isolated her. She canceled January, canceled June.
Then she canceled Christmas, and before this man, we
had dinner every Thursday. If I even rescheduled, she’d die.
Die. She will die. Soon. I’ve walked away, and she will die soon.
Melissa Fite Johnson is the author of three full-length collections, most recently Midlife Abecedarian (Riot in Your Throat, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, HAD, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Melissa, a high school English teacher, is a poetry editor for The Weight, a journal for high school students, and Porcupine Lit, a journal by and for teachers. She and her husband live with their dogs in Lawrence, KS, where she co-hosts the Volta reading series at the Replay Lounge. Her favorite revenge story is Promising Young Woman.
