Born too late

I was born twenty years too late

to save a woman already unraveling.

the apparent and ignored firestorm

I came into the world a decade after the warning signs,

when the stories were already whispered as jokes

eccentric…they chuckled,

just a little crazy…

as if madness was a party trick,

as if fear was entertainment,

as if children don’t remember fire.

But I remember.

I remember yelling into a room of adults

who smiled at the spectacle

and never saw the smoke.

I remember being small,

sounding alarms with baby teeth,

and no one listened

because who listens to a child

describing danger they cannot name?

So I grew.

I grew louder, older, clearer,

but still nobody wanted the truth

not really.

They wanted the myth,

not the monster trapped inside her ribcage.

They wanted the quirky shadow,

not the storm rattling the windows at 3 AM

like the demons running management of her head

They wanted me to hold her,

fix her,

carry her legacy like an unpaid debt.

“It’s your mother. Your responsibility.”

As if blood were a leash.

As if my birth created a contract

I never agreed to sign.

Born to be stuck with it

I was five when she brushed my hair

and called it beautiful

then took remnants to set it on fire

to burn the witch lurking in her nightmares.

I was five when her love and terror wore the same face,

when cookies and cruelty lived in the same day,

when laughter, mascara tears, and knives

shared the same breath.

When loving her meant being scared to death

The shadows she see’s lurking in the corner

The ones that touch her all over

How the argument is that she is not crazy

There’s no convincing her to get checked out

When finally getting Mrs. Prince to come in and see what I see

And Mommie Dearest in full costume

Of how low my self esteem is and imaginative I can be

The moment Mrs. Prince chose not to believe me

I paid for that sin, of opening my mouth

I begged the other parent to help me get free

Only to be disregarded

Until the police needed to be called.

My friends made noise but it was before the 2000’s

so who gives a shit?

No one did because latch key kids aren’t as important as the kids of today.

Cakes and loads of gifts wrapped in love and anger

All I’ve ever wanted is someone to psychologically evaluate her

I’ve witnessed and know for a fact that

She would protect me from the world,

but never from herself.

She was both the shelter and the storm,

and I was born into the eye of it

without a way out,

without a choice,

without an escape hatch

not even big enough for a child.

And now I wait

God..how cruel this waiting…

knowing that help only comes

after catastrophe,

that society only moves

when discomfort spills into their own lives,

not when someone breaks quietly

behind closed doors.

Her heartbreak was a drama to them,

her tantrums amusing

until they were not.

Her suffering was a spectacle

until it became inconvenient

and then suddenly

it was my burden again.

I am tired.

Tired in my bones, in my blood,

in the parts of me that learned survival

before I ever learned childhood.

I was born twenty years too late to save her,

and twenty years too early to save myself.