when my father's conditional love falls
on my shoulder, digging it's ‘religious’ systematic claws
into my collarbone; demanding
sacrifice in return for his
acknowledgement
of my
existence;
my worthiness
I learn to receive his broken
version of what love is
without protest.
_paint me as I am, eager to please_
_settle into the orbs of my deep_
_unhappy eyes with ease paint me perfect, ready to be wanted_
_to be loved, paint me light and visible against a wall._
when my mother's backhand strikes against my cheek
her judgements grow palms to hit me against the wall
as her anger cools down to simmer
her fingertips
slide down the
curvature of my spine
searching for forgiveness
she, a battlefield of a woman
she fights everything she doesn't know
I learn to hide aspects of myself she has no desire to learn how to love.
_paint me as I am, without complaint_
_kinetic energy without equilibrium_
_a fixed star collapsing in on itself_
_paint me staring at stellar remnants_
_add figure; less interest, skin_
_colour in some endurance in my cheeks._
when my family's anger and hand-me-down trauma
comes over for lunch or dinner
makes itself
a guest in our spaces
and cusses out
whilst throwing Bible verses
tells me I've failed
at loving properly?
I learn to cry without
really crying
at all.
_paint me as I am_
_a body soaked in victimhood_
_like a holy bath_
_baptized_
_smell it on these tattered limbs_
_on my crumbling bones_
_blood stained on my hands deep your brush into a jar of feelings_
_an etymology_
_of events linked by meaning,_
_in a chain of cruelties which make up the man,_
_The What & the When_
_Of who I am -_
_The portrait of a blue boy._
©️ Prince Rayanne Chidzvondo
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