I sat at your table

with your chosen family

the 12 illegitimate children

that you all carry in the heaviness around you

the pills she pops

and ciggies she sneaks around the side of the house
I held my intellect in my hand like a broken bottle

mind slamming your other step son with the difference between equality and equity

equality: equal opportunity for everyone no matter their circumstance

equity: opportunity cultivated to create an equal playing field  
I told him this even though it was he who was born with the black skin and the absent

father

but I guess we had more in common than I realised then

isn’t it funny sad how the most disenfranchised hold up the privileged without a

moment of critique

I conjured up the time when I was 15 and you asked me

with a glint and a snigger:

are you butch or the other one?

to shame you

to show these people

that your jokes

are insults cultivated to maim and disfigure

but as I sat alone facing the 5 of you

I found nothing but defence

he and his new found soldier identity

her and her self-reflexive jocularity

tut tutting my truth away

and finally your stay at home punch you in the face partner who you will never

officially make your wife who told me

to grow up when I was out the door

when I dared stand up from the that table

and walk out without saying goodbye and following social graces. 
And I am reminded yet again

that my stories are mine and yours are yours

and your personhood is the statesman, like the one you used to drive down our

suburban street full of the women and families you had made us

and

today

I am the free woman

because in these months I have spent by my brother’s side wishing things were different

spinning that same old vinyl record

I found only silence

the stab of a skipping needle

and that same decrepit place

where I am the victim and perp and you are the poor misunderstood white man with

money in his pockets but no heart to understand.
I will always be broken in those places where you bent me to your will

where you splintered every hope I ever had of a world where love was unconditional.
And today I know, that the unconditional is only mine to experience, for as you stand,

I stand and we both exhale, shivering from who we have become and all the harsh

words we have said. You have taught me pain, and distance and the agony of wanting

love from someone who doesn’t know how to feel and I have become that too, let it

go, and here I stand, alone, waiting for the world to pull me further into my darkness

so I can be who I was meant to be, because of you.
Forgive me for I have sinned.
and as sinners must
they repent

but I don’t bow down to any patriarchal arrangement

least of all in this language where I have no voice but mimicry.
So I cry myself to vulnerability and back into the arms of the struggle between

becoming what the world order wants and what I need.
and          here          I          breathe. 
In sickness and in health. 
Til death do us part

and these words

become my only imprint.
My flint that burns away a thousand cobwebs and creates new beginnings, finishes

chapters I left hanging there

by an indent

a missed comma

or a justified paragraph. 
This looking glass is my last laugh

and when my voice hits the ears of my best mate of who knows these fairytales all too

well
he throws his head back lets out a roar and says

the day we start taking advice from a Xanax addict named Glenda

is the day we have lost our way.