Wng

"She does not walk
no, she crawls back to me  
again on both knees.  
She balances her apologies
on her teeth and  
bares them up into a smile,
eyes bright and blue and bountiful
and boring into mine.
I want it all back, she says, 
I want it all back and I want
to try again.
I tell her that I am not a thing
she can throw away  
just to beg for later, not a  
pacifier for a haughty child or
the stuffed animal
that used to sleep by her side.
I am not your comfort anymore, I say.
I am skin and bones and veins and blood.
I am terrific triumphs and miserable mistakes.
I am my mother’s teary eyes
and my father’s clenched fist
but the difference between
her and I
is that I didn’t blame her  
for the uglier parts of me.
And I didn’t think that  
the rougher edges of her silhouette
were ugly at all.
But she mistook my shadow for a stain
and called me dirty
for the darker parts of myself
that I tried to leave behind me.
I told her that I would never have done this to her.
I told her I would have never expected her to
be the sun, luminous and lustrous,  
when I knew she was only human
with a shadow like mine.
She turns her eyes away and her lips shake
as she says to me
that our shadows were never the same,
that hers was so much darker, and
that she never blamed me for anything
other than turning on the light."

COUNTING SHADOWS (via mvrdvrous)