by Mia Wright
(Uses excerpts from the song “Anticipate” by Ani DiFranco.)
1.
“we don’t say everything that we could
so that we can say later, ‘oh, you misunderstood’”
in the story I heard,
someone else played the role of villain,
though my mother never revealed
their evil deed.
she just said it, like sliding
a note underneath the door.
When my mother doesn’t give
explanations willingly,
don’t even bother asking.
she clearly did not want to talk about it.
2.
fact: noun. a thing that is known or proved to be true.
eventually, we started having an affair.
both she and i, cheating on our respective partners,
all under the same roof, all under their noses.
after six months, we came clean, endured painful breakups,
then reunited with our partners, and started cheating.
together. again.
i kept telling myself these lies:
that i was changing, becoming better,
but the truth is,
i never had good intentions to begin with.
3.
“i hold my cards up close to my chest,
i say what i have to, and i hold back the rest”
the internet became, during that time, its own magician.
people could prestidigitate themselves
into whatever they wanted.
so, that’s what i did.
slipped on new names, stole beautiful women’s pictures
made the boys of my dreams fall in love
with the girl i’d always wanted to be.
i wasn’t really lying to them,
not even about how much i loved them.
it was my voice, my feelings, my personality,
just poured into a package they actually wanted.
a package that didn’t look like me.
4.
qualifier: noun. a word or phrase used to attribute a quality to another word.
i do this thing
where i add words like “little bit” and “kinda”
to my statements. it’s a coping skill.
to make me smaller. to make me feel more protected.
5.
“you are subtle as a windowpane standing in my view,
but i will wait for it to rain so that i can see you”
my grandmother always said my parents left me with her
because i was sick. i believed for a long time
that they didn’t like me, didn’t want to be with me,
because i was sick.
My grandmother never told me how she convinced
my parents that my bronchitis would heal faster
if i were with her, that her house was warmer
than theirs.
better for me.
6.
omission: noun. someone or something that has been left out or excluded.
it felt like a betrayal to have ever had my uncle near us.
It felt like a betrayal that my mother never
told us what he did to her,
what he could have done to us.
he’s in prison now. for molesting another little girl.
i hate him.
7.
“for every hand extended, another lies in wait”
he told me he loved me. said, “in the unlikely event
that we don’t end up together, i will never
disappear from your life.”
what he didn’t say was that he was already
somebody’s husband, and five children’s father.
8.
“repetition is the secret to developing a powerful belief.”
listen. hear the chanting in the distance.
now, whether those voices encant
truth or lie,
bottomless love or brittle hatred,
they are doing the same work.
they are making themselves
believe
Mia Wright (she/her) is an Oklahoma native, single parent, and seer. Her poems have appeared in This Land, Word Riot, The Girl God, Watershed, and some restaurant napkins. Wright was a finalist for the 2004 Grolier Poetry Prize and earned an MFA in Poetry from Boise State University. Blog: https://19poems.blog/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/19poems
Twitter: https://twitter.com/19poems
(And be sure to read Mia’s poem what we can learn from water. – Elephants Never)