My mother is a casket
I lie in when I need someone to hold me.

I’ve grown up without a mother
love me, with flower petal

sized bruises on my butterfly wing skin
scars like a first graders lopsided L’s

only having sex in the dark
a bouquet of peeled flesh

Look me in the eyes
when you ask me how I’m doing.

I’ll say, “I’m great” and get flashbacks of
my mother’s smile

her fists raining down like melted crayons
as my spine grew from 3 to an 18 year old

She asks if I want to wear nail polish the same color
as the bloody nail marks on our bathroom wall

I call them beautiful, like my mother
But I have the nose of my father but

Sometimes, my uncle forgot that I was his daughter,
Take photos of me when I was sleeping, say

“I want to feel you in that dress.”

“Uh, the fabric is interesting.”

“Yes, it is. You look sexy.”

“I guess.”

I remember one time he pinned me to the bed
And as his fingers traveled the frozen crescent moon of my spine

He said, “I’m going to make love to you.”
I went home, what was mine, cries
waking my mother held

me,   a coffin and
a chorus at church in the form of a jury’s
cry
“You should have known better.”

Isabella Neblett