It started out as a love poem, and then grief, anger, (and love) took over.
Real? You want real? Back to writing on paper the way I feel.
The Adopted, Dejected (Son and) Daughter (Randyjw; April 14, 2020)
He explores me to the core of my soul
my first breath, a cry, because I did not know his name
a desire to be held and to be loved for all time
and thousands of singular steps I chose to take*
To be held onto, so much, that I was formless, spineless
The peacemaker, a Cinderella
a pleasant woman of sorts
My mind, not mine, but mindless
to be good, to cause you to never let me go
A displeasing result, to follow orders not of my making
to be chastised and berated
as the consequence for these actions
To be belittled, when little, to assert my independence
withheld from affections
and confidence slow-whittled
My heart was broken many times,
at the thousands of disappointments seen in your eyes
at the casting aside of other peoples’ lives
and the callow reflection deemed grand of the statusized
I chiseled away and acted out
became a wild child
and, as a feral adult,
maintain the thin skin
of my childhood sensitivities
and cry like the unloved, unwanted thing
that never seemed how to learn
to reconcile all these things
It wasn’t to some other
as if it happened on-screen
my judgment was stunted
and became a bad dream
I was good, I was bad,
and my fairness was had
’til it left not much more
than a shell in its wake
What once calciferous deposits
took years to build upon
now come shear to clear translucence,
no less fragile, still more strong
For I treasure the love you intended
and realize your anxieties at being a parent
Never understanding when to let go, and
Being fiercely overprotective
For I know, now, how much you molded me
Being denied the history of my family
Cutting me off and denying me to the end
Did you cut off your emotions when I was ten?
I think it was before
at the elementary school doors
Wanting not to be thought uncool
being kissed by a parent
I’m sorry I hurt you
I’m sorry I repeated the scenario at college
I never learned
and how I have yearned
I have made a lifetime of making apologies to you…
but, when is it your turn?
How it has been, since that time
so way back when
that instead of your smothering,
wet, sloppy coffee kisses**
I’ve had to be always the one
to take the first initiative?
To be the one to offer a kiss
to your turned cheek, unreturned
To be the one to say I love you
with stone cold silence my reward
I’m sorry for wanting to be loved
I’m sorry for wanting to fit in
and never finding a place
It was presented as shielding me
but I was intelligent, so caught on
Maybe you should have allowed me into
the inner sanctum
Made me feel as if my thoughts
might matter
Instead of allowing me to be a
forever-child
Instead of a body that’s now grown?
Telling me hardly anything about
anything going on?
Hoping I’d forget things, until I
was reminded later on–
You chose me, remember?
Well, maybe you can’t quite recall…
The joy you must have felt
after all those years
waiting for oh so long
I’ve pieced together
the subtle clues you extended
one, maybe at seven
and another, through my social security number
The gifts you gave
lay in my jewelry box
admired in my own way
rifled through and taken
in front of me, while I watched
You re-gifted them to others
showing me that I must value them so little
heedless of sentimental attachment
or any comfort of nostalgia
And a choice of a better-days Bambi
or a bedraggled tiger
to give to the kid who fell down
off his bicycle
Nothing to hold onto,
nothing to hold on
and you sit and remain there
with your voicemail turned on
No, I didn’t cause your cancer
as you so like to claim
where both you and significant other
chose to pinpoint the blame
Of saying you’d disown me
when I was a teen
because I’d wanted to learn
who my birth parents had been?
Denying you’d said that
and so many other things
like saying a former boyfriends’ two children
weren’t like having the real thing (your own)?
You didn’t believe I could be hurt
by extrapolating in the frame of an adoptee?***
Denying me knowledge that my father
was dying
Then telling me to rush over
the miles
and watching his morphine-addled
last hours (okay, a bit more, but…)
Telling me no, I couldn’t get a cot
and stay by his bedside until he was not
Looking over my shoulder to see
the devilish grin****
of the nurse plumping his pillows–
and knowing that this was the end?
I said never, ever, do that to me
ever again
and break the news not alone to me
but with a posse of relative(s)/friend(s)
(the second because it rhymes)
And you promised, but repeated the same
scenario with my brother
I suspect you hid his cancer
over a year with your continued
trips back up to Boston
And hearing the news, of my brother again, with
a cousin present
and learning of your own battle with it
and more Aunts with you, yet
Asking if I could speak with you
alone
to receive a three-ply no
rather than a shared mother-daughter
moment?
Did you harbor a bunch of resentment
when you, one day, outed the fact
that my Aunt’s heirlooms from
the two of yours mother
my Uncle declared he won’t give back?
And I wanted to keep peace in the family
and said you shouldn’t act this way
because I still wanted a family to have
and thought it too high a price to pay
But, I guess you’ll teach your lesson
as you’ve done the same to me
Is it a cycle of abuse
or some form of reverse psychology?
You’ve always, but maybe twice, tended
to side with anyone but me
Encouraging me to lie, and listening to you,
saying it was me?
With your significant other
you made some kind of a devil’s pact
and when, at the beginning you
mentioned this “deal”
I was completely and utterly aghast
Everything you’d made with yours and dad’s
hard work
went completely to their family
leaving out my bro and me
In cryptic fashion, you mentioned
you tied up your money
I said, whatever it is, I don’t
care about me, just take care
of my sibling (brother)
Then the trips away started
with one reason or another
never knowing it might have anything
to do with my brother.
And I went to him, solo,
I couldn’t know why you’d delay by weeks
I used half of my savings,
the rest with you, upon my return
and my job you belittled, was apparently
good enough for my friend
who came to your workplace with her mother
discussing they wouldn’t hire me again
Yet they had, in the past, and had
given me a raise
and had fired many others
and where I had still remained
You said I was homeless just to spite you
but I think three years’ way too long
and know the mother I thought G-d
a human with problems all along
And so this Chillul Hashem
goes back to the secular
self-loathing Jew I tried hard to be
When I wanted so much to fit in
that I assimilated and then lost me
I still have that feminist streak
and that veneer of American society
and I apologize for denying your heritage
and trying to mold you in some ways
more modern
When you weren’t with me when I
went to my brother
over your dead body you
said you wouldn’t put me as proxy
He passed away and then I came
to help you, too
And you chose then to show me a
paper
that showed us both as proxies to him?
And if that wasn’t enough
throughout the years with your significant
other and kin
You’d promised everything that was yours
would be left to me?
And slowly, continually, and surely
you kept giving away
everything little by little
to always everyone else?*****
And then they’d flaunt it before me
and wave it before my face
Saying Look what your mother gave me
All a pathetic and hurtful disgrace
So, your significant other renéged
on his deal
I’ve been through that before
and can sympathize with how that feels
But do you think I should trust
his daughter’s call to confirm with her my
personal information to get “back”
into your will?
… she statedly said three years or so ago,
before my life and apartment fell
When I told her I wanted to speak with you
she said, “She’s not speaking to you! Get it?”
and now, with my phone and email hacked,
my phone uncharged and likely deactivated
it took months to get a replacement
and I still can’t even use it
And you, also, now in your fourth living
place in the in the past year or so since
he passed away
the last time I visited you, you
seemed quite happy that I came
But since I call from the soup kitchen phone
and service is banned now due to the virus
I still keep getting your voicemail
and my own phone number might’ve expired
On a cool and early morn when I had
a bit more to my energy
and free buses to assist me
on my seven-hour journey (2-1/2 hours walking)
I learned his daughter now you’d given
over power of attorney
regardless of the fact of COVID (19)
that I wouldn’t get to see you
I don’t know whether she’s provoking me
or whether it’s to you of credit deserving
whose oversight of the daughter
to visit
was left off the list by design
I found out when I visited last
and they told me who it was
and I’d need to go to Court
whose time might come
after you’re gone
I asked them to call that daughter so she can put
me on the list
Her reply, to them, was I
should call her
meaning no, or some blackmail,
or something
That daughter married three times
my cousin was also once homeless
and somehow they’re better than me
the adopted, dejected (son and) daughter
* (post script: everything became all mingled and intertwined)
** (sorry; I can’t change this; it’s central to my memories)
*** That it would leave scars upon me for all of eternity? (Added: April 17, 2020)
**** (of “Joanne, or Johanna”) (Added: September 30, 2020)
***** Their family (Added: September 27, 2020), my cousins (Added: October 17, 2020), and your friends (Added: September 27, 2020)?
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