family

Exchange

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

you have laid out the puzzles,
fixed the hot chocolate
in small pink cups placed before them,
popped the popcorn in the pan,
taken their small hands to form meatballs,
and set the table with
expensive wine, fine china,
everything that is beautiful and perfect.

we exchange the pieces of our lives
that mothers, daughters, friends, exchange,
handing them over as casually
as the French rolls you bought from the store
(dry, non-absorbent, bland as dirt).
i share my opinions as openly
as i know how, my heart set out
for you, mother, to remedy.

no amount of wine imported
from the Rhone River in France
will drown out the renewed realization
that the things i care for most,
the building blocks of my soul,
are blinded by the vision you have
of who you think i should be.

i exchange my words for silence,
then small talk that will lead nowhere.
it is safer for me to be that image
of yourself (the very part of you
that i despise, refuse to emulate)
than to cast away my weekend
with your distorted mirror view.

Inheritance

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

it is true what i say:
i have no idea who you are
or why he married you
or why it is that
you put your hands on her
whose sting
carried over
into the shadows of my childhood.

i know i wouldn’t be here
spitting out these vicious words
if it weren’t for
your egg, his seed.
and i am thankful for that.

but your countenance?
your picture in my memory?
it is nothing more than
a vague recollection,
a fuzzy image,
rough around the edges,
someone who couldn’t remember my name
nor cared to ever learn it.

when you go,
tears will be shed,
but not mine, nor my mother’s.
we all know this is true.
you have lived your life,
given purpose to what we want:
to be better mothers,
to stretch our love
into those shadowy places
where your hands couldn’t reach.

What They’ll Remember

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

what they’ll remember
is this fire that
shuts out the frigid winter
with a crackle and zip,
a whip to the wind;
this shuffling of places
on the couch,
bottoms in laps,
blankets bundled in
heaps of warmth;
this mother with arms
wrapping love around them
as they switch places
and fight for their turn;
this father playing monster
from the floor,
his whiskery face
lit up amongst the flames;
this quiet game that
lets all the talks out
and erupts in unsuppressible
jubilant giggles.

what they’ll remember
is nothing else from
this day,
this night,
this part of their lives,
nothing but
love and warmth and happiness.

Sarcasm

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

i’m so thrilled to know
that the class i dread the most
has the neediest, rudest students.

i’m so thrilled to see
that every imaginable computer problem
will happen seventh period.

i’m so thrilled to hear
how well my not-quite-eight-year-old
understands sarcasm.

i’m so thrilled to know
that you think i need to read a book about defiance
so i can begin to put her in line.

i’m so thrilled to remember
why it is that she and i were not defiant.
fear is a great facilitator of submission.

i’m so thrilled to hear
the temper tantrums and talking back
that follow me everywhere i go.

i’m so thrilled to be
in this place i cannot escape from,
in this hollow where i don’t know who i am.

let me be thrilled
about something for real:
that you will never read this
(not knowing who I really am).

Carry

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

as much as i hear what you say
i will never understand why.
how in any right mind
could five rooms full of
talking-back teenagers
ever compare
to the jubilant joy
of young children
dashing through the snow?

their voices carry
like songbirds emerged in winter,
shutting out all the
whipping wind’s hollowness.
yet,
you would rather be here,
trapped in our windowless dungeon,
feeding them the lines
you’ve spouted so many times?

i’ll take my two weeks
and carry them in my mind
on my forever vacation.
for now,
i will draw a zipper across my lips
and, for once, be polite.
after all,
this year cannot carry on,
and summer’s sun,
giggling girls,
and road trips
beckon my dreams
from your harsh reality.

December Daughters

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Miss Mythili

Miss Logical:
Daddy had to take a cold shower
because we took all the water
with our up-to-the-line bath.
Miss Tattle-Tale:
(whiny voice)Grandpa, Daddy has the binoculars
and he won’t let me have them!
Miss Manipulative:
I am not going to brush my teeth
or comb my hair until you give me Blankey.
Miss Dreamer:
Wait, star, I need to change my wish!
I actually don’t want to be
a monkey living in a tree.
Miss Imaginative:
(holding a broken piece of cilantro)
I just don’t understand why your
daughter would think it’s OK
to jump over the water like that.
Miss Mythili,
my ever-changing artistic child.

Riona

if i say no to your sister,
she stomps her feet
and demands justice.
if i say no to you,
you reluctantly leave the room,
rest your little legs on a chair,
and silently allow
the crocodile tears to flow down your cheeks.
how could i ever say no to the child
who can’t go an hour
without an I love you
or a kiss on the cheek
or a snuggle on the couch?

Isabella

in the course of a few months
of second grade,
you have learned the
kissing-marriage-baby-carriage song
and its R-rated 21st century version,
how to access the Internet
and what web sites have the best games,
how to apply lipstick
and pose like a model for pictures,
how to multiply and say
Newton’s laws of motion
in English and Spanish,
and how to grow up
too quickly right before my eyes.

Fifty-Seven

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

it takes two sisters
four hours to make
three pies
dessert for fourteen people
when we include
two of six aunts
two of seven uncles.
three platters of lasagna
and forty-two plates later
we celebrate
year fifty-seven of
my father’s life
who with two “old” legs
just rode
twenty-four miles up a mountain
and hiked three and a half
and still carries his four grandkids
wherever the
endless numbers add up to next.

Endless Arrays

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

this is what it could be like:
the drive along the curvy road,
the sleeping baby at home,
the seven of us occupying
every last seat in the van,
the mountains with their
endless array of snow,
our legs working their way
through drifts and down slopes,
the warming hut that
warms our hearts,
the children with their
endless array of happiness;
you here, the four of us together,
just as all families should be.

Dimension

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

i am not here in this moment
of screaming, cussing anger.
i am magically moving my father’s car
into another dimension

here, at home, where i have a husband
who in thirteen years has barely
raised a voice, let alone allowed a cuss
in a world that is love, love, love.

you may pull forward your Sorento
and disappear into your hateful reality.
i prefer to remain in the dimension of love
that shields my heart from your evility.

you will drive home, your elderly parents
unable to determine where they went wrong.
i will drive until he takes the wheel from my
shaking hands, his hands on my hands, my heart.

Underbelly

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

we are here now,
sister, brother-in-law, niece,
grandparents who have filled
the underbelly of the tree
with Wal-mart’s
explosion of Chinese reality.

he and i lie in the dark
on our basement floor mattress,
the tint of the waning moon
lingering light upon his whiskered face.

Santa has already arrived,
stripped down because
the underbelly of the tree
regurgitated its recklessness.

i will never forget,
i tell him,
this time at my own
grandparents’ house,
when my mother,
her measly salary
half of my father’s pittance,
after seeing the
gifts my grandmother
inundated us with,
turned to him and said,
‘I hate being poor.‘

i try to remember this
as we rise before the sun,
set up the camera
in anticipation of their anxious faces,
and spend hours
exchanging money, goods
from the underbelly of the tree
that seems to mock,
wealth, wealth, wealth
with its shedding branches
that drop needles
like tears onto the hardwood.