The Inconvertible Truth: A Crab and Her Daughter

For my Mom on Mother’s Day

Determination--"3 a : the act of deciding definitely and firmly; also : the result of such an act of decision b : firm or fixed intention to achieve a desired end.” --Webster

Dear Mom,

Everyday is a gift
(you know the pictures)
when I look into my reflection in the sea
and the only thing good I see
is that somewhere inside of me
is you.

Maybe a blessing, or a curse,
it’s the inconvertible truth.

I peer into the portal and see
the past…

I sat on the shoreline
and watched you, oblivious to your surroundings
while wandering,
parched and weary
because you were thinking
thinking thinking
(or trying not to think)
the whole time.

…becoming the present (again)…

Catching myself,
(and you catch me, like you always have)
breathless, shaking, and shaken by
the long journey and long one ahead,
and the thoughts
thoughts thoughts infesting my mind
(but goddamn it, I tried to find an exterminator).

Thoughts that could take me far away
to California
or to college,
to an adolescence where you and I were estranged,
or back into your womb,
but instead they take me nowhere
except, ultimately, to my own
undercurrent of doom.

Mom,
I swear
I’m making an effort
to create a better life for myself
than you could make yours,
but much of the time it’s just too damn hard…

I’m a bloated, static balloon,
attachment issues,
I’ll float away from this earth if no one holds my
string*
so I’ve attached it to a cinder block
in which I may hide,
like a (hermit) crab without a shell,
fearful of the tidal waves,
resentful of the vertebrates.

However, in hiding
away from the storm out there,
I’ve colored, drawn, written
some meaning straight out of
this cluttered mind
to bring to you
(accept=1, reject=0).

Dear Mom,
I’m so much like you
(or maybe I’m not)…
I know your determination
got us through before
so I’ve gotta claw together the pieces of mine
so we can make it this time.

And truly:
“If I was going through fucking hell
I’d only want one person in the whole
goddamned world
by my side”**

Oh Dear Mother, lonely old courage seeker:
please tell me what we will do
when Charon quits poling his ferry
and we get out on a foggy bank.

Will we stand watching the boat
disappear on the ponded, algal waters of Lethe?***
Or will we arrive
to some mystical river under a rainbow
with unicorns dancing around
where we’ll drink forever from the infinitude
flowing from the ground?

You can’t tell me the answers,
and that was never your job.
So I’m left with lessons
abundant
burns that must be burnt
to learn what I should’ve already learned.

Every bit of will I have,
all my eggs; every shell
of sanity will be thrown
into the black, violent sea,
and squandered meaninglessly in the downwelling
if I think (or feel) that’s what I need to do.

But the inconvertible truth—
I’m your only daughter,
so what can you do?
In the end,
I hope you’re still with me
as I was (and will always be) with you.

Yours Truly,

Jessica