For everyone who is asking if my mother knows: she knows.
My mother knows something is wrong with me. My mother knows what they did. My mother wishes she knew what they were doing before they did it, but she knows she'll never be able to fix it.
My mother knows i carry heavy world in my stomach and bleeding rivers on my skin. My mother knows i collect tongues, and she knows i always will. She knows i know heartbeat and heartache. She knows i know heartrace better than she does. My mother knows i will know things she never will.
My mother knows that i know what she knows. What she does not know is how to make me unknow all the things that she did not teach me to know.
My mother knows i carry memories like forests rooted deeply into me, sucking all the nutrients from this over planted soil that my mother calls 'how you used to be.' My mother knows how to burn a match but she doesn't know how to burn away the elder sows of things i know without burning me. My mother knows i have been burned before. She inhaled the ashes, but she knows she inhaled them far too late. She always wishes she had seen the smoke.
My mother does not know what to do with this tropical overgrown disaster she used to know as her daughter. So my mother does what she knows best: which is to pretend she does not know at all.
