Slab of Meat

The nurse gave me tranquilizers

I couldn’t stop crying

I couldn’t breathe

hunched on the floor in front of the nurses station

my hot flesh packed against cold tile

a slab of meat

digging 

“Take this,  it’ll help you calm down.”

I complied.

I learned.

It was Mother’s Day;

Two things for my father to destroy:

my mother

and Mother’s Day

How dare he

leave me to live with the guilt

when he’s the one with dirt on his hands?

His rage monster

bred mine

I don’t appreciate it

but I do

without his filth

and his invitation to his room;

to his shower

a fire in me wouldn’t have been born

The fire is all I have

Must I appreciate my father’s dirty hands?

Am I born of dirt and filth

or did I let the warm sun change me?

Doing mushrooms may have saved my life.