Diary of a daughter who didn't get the part

1.

You lie miles apart in sleep as I cling
onto consciousness in my camouflage
of static black, thick like tar, thick like shame
in a house of mirrors I can’t escape.

There’s a haunting here

taking shape beneath the sticky smell of
your tulip breath - in and out - connecting
me to you

as I lip sync the words
that were never exhaled.

2.

On Sundays we performed with cherry pie,
sometimes for the man with the walrus
mustache. I practiced silence until you
summoned me to play the part of the ditzy
waitress, presenting us on a plastic tray –

he bit my pretty cakes
in two

I fled into the gleam of our chrome plated
kitchen, filling tins with chokecherries, my
back turned away from that pottery mug
held together with tape.

There is a special way of feeling shame,
deep enough to keep silent, that grunt next door
was always too late
as you hauled me through the air, sugar flakes
falling from my lips, me –

unpeeling over kitchen tiles but it’s
okay, it’s okay, a suture of hope
holding my heart in place.

3.

Huddled in the bathroom - our faces close
almost like love I’d dare myself to think,
straining my eyes so we’d bleed into one

until

a Chinese burn across my skull as you
twisted my plaits like a noose

stop talking about it.

After we watched that hospital show
I noticed how you wear your emotions:
like a stroke.

4.

The worst days were spent alone in my room,
the anemone-glow of a self-inflicted wound
my voice trapped beneath my tongue, a cry
caught in a barbed wire mouth, then suddenly
a shuffle under my door, paper folded tight.

sorry, kid

I swallow it whole, I am nobody I
know, I am fourteen years old and I have
given up, mouse-clicking towards a place where
self-destruction is encouraged.

5.

It is almost day, I leave
before you wake, taking in
the smiles of a holiday in Spain,
smiles that threaten to hook
their glistening teeth onto
my skin. I pull away

dazed beneath the curdling
sky, I plant my feet for the
last time

I count my scars and think about
the possibility of us
a constructed coming together
but this seems to be an end
where we split in two
and only just
survive.