Dear Kalie,

When you ask about how I was raised
I want you to know the truth about where your mother came from.

We were a dysfunctional bunch.

My mother loved Jesus, almost as much
As she loved Sally Jesse Rafael.
Only Jesus had perfect vision so that made him cooler,
But mom said if SJR believed in him enough,
She wouldn’t need those red glasses.
Mom raised me with long skirts, furry eyebrows, and unshaved pits
It was these kinds of silly antics that made me almost-atheist.

Mother, A self proclaimed widow with 6 children
Hated my father so much, she paid for his burial plot,
The day after they divorced.
He was the anti-christ. Jesus hated him too.

When I told her I was pregnant, She
Wished me dead like my father,
Told me I was too fat for a pine box,
Recommended cremation instead.
Besides it was cheaper, & she wouldn’t have to bring me flowers every month.
This meant more money for her pocket after she tithed.

My father’s sex education crash course
Included tools from his line of work
He was a real life iron man
He once asked me what I thought love felt like
Always a poet, I said
it would feel like warm water trickling down my spine
I smiled @ my daddy, awaiting his approval,
He laughed
AT me
Showed me a pistol, looked like a glue gun
Told me men carry these in between their legs
That it would hurt when they squirt
Said if I wanted he would solder my legs together
So that I could “feel just how warm lust is”
I kindly declined his thoughtful offer
And have kept ice packs in my freezer, ever since
Just in case.

These folks, my parents
Damaged me, and made me wiser simultaneously.
I never understood their way of loving me.
& I rebelled with legs open and a screaming heart

I was 16 years old, when
your father heard my organ cry
patched me up
In the basement of his fathers church
He held me like they should have

5 months later
My stomach resembled
A growing balloon animal being blown by a 96 year old smoker
Pregnancy was a slow process

I still remember the hospital room,
Smelled like life & death conjugating
With rubber gloves on

Your father wanted a boy,
Hoped that your umbilical cord was really a penis

He decided at the last minute
That watching my vagina being ripped to shreds
Was not something he would want to see
When they told me I would have C-section
I was pissed.
Anesthesia never really numbs abandonment

I was a lonely galaxy,
Holding the universe in my womb

There was an oxygen mask over my nostrils
And all I wanted to do was smell your breath

They split my stomach open,
Cracked the globe and unearthed you
Placed your bleeding skin in my arms
I fell in love with God all over again
There wasn’t a Darwinist in the world
That could convince me that the sparkles in your eyes
were the result of any big bang
No, your birth
was more miraculous than evolution

You were an angel’s brushstroke
You were dust falling from the bottom of Gods sandal
You were the result of a star sneezing
Falling rapidly from the nostrils of an allergic sky
I am convinced heaven shot you straight into my arms

Your eyelids rising & falling like dying butterflies
Grey clouds hugging your rosy cheeks
Too young to understand these thunderstorms forming in your eyes
You cried for the first time
The doctors placed you on my chest and
Your tiny hands grasped mine like lightening bolts
Electrocuted my very being
Shocked sense into me,
Then and there, I realized
This is what a poem feels like

My dysfunctional family
If ever they taught me anything
It was to love you
Love you like mother’s Jesus & tithing
Love you like fathers Soldering Gun & Iron

I will love you like their parents never taught them

I will teach you a new kind of love

Educate this love into your womb
So that your walls can learn
The miracles of your husband’s sperm

Love you until your uterus is the place that dreams are born in

Daughter,
Always keep this poem like rainbow promises
In case struggle ever rains over your children’s heads
And tell them these stories
Of my dysfunctional family

And your children,
Will be the spinning wheels
On the back of this poem
Driving forward these lessons
I have taught you
To their children
And their children’s children

All because
We dared to break the cycle.

Te amo.