today i saw bruises on my mother’s body, it wasn’t abuse bruises, but sadness bruises. i can’t stop thinking about it and it still hurts me seeing them on her body. i can’t even fall asleep. i don’t like my mom very much and she’s such a bad parent, but somehow i can’t stop wishing her pain was mine.
1) Mother and daughter Art Print by Natalia Tejera // 2) Pinterest // 3) Michal Pudelka // 4) Emma Neill // 5 - 9) Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin
If Roses grow in Heaven
Lord, please pick a bunch for me.
Place them in my Mother’s arms
and tell her they’re from me.
Tell her that I love her and miss her,
and when she turns to smile,
place a kiss upon her cheek
and hold her for a while.
Because remembering her is easy,
I do it every day,
but there’s an ache within my heart
that will never go away.
{Hannah Green, from "Are you still hungry, Mother?"/ Anne Carson/Sam Gordon, "A Mother's Hate"/ Ella Wilson/ Joan Tierney/ Ella Wilson/ Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous/ Unknown/ Nayyirah Waheed/ Sharon Olds, “Holding To A Wall, Treading Saltwater”/ John Green, Turtles All the Way Down/ Safia Elhillo, "an inheritance," published in Narrative Northeast/ Annie Ernaux, from I Remain in Darkness/ Poplar Street by Chen Chen/ Unknown/ Tumblr User: @inkskinned/ Elena Poniatowska, from "La Flor de Lis," published c. January 2011/ Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom}
fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i mother it, the absence of her ii. i was hard to bear from the very start.’
[text id: my sadness is a fire that i built to keep my hands warm on lonely nights. // art by sivan roshianu // i keep my misery bared between my teeth. i refuse to let her leave. / i am nothing without this obsession of mine.]