of course i was spinning out on mother’s day

sometimes 
you have to dip your toe
back into that
pool of pain
sometimes
you have to take a sip
of your sweet misery
sometimes
you have to
dive in
wallow
swallow
drown yourself
baptize yourself
rise again
& face another day
forgiving 
yourself
but never 
quite
forgetting
who you were then
who you are now
so you never
have to do it
again.

on this seventeenth mother’s day, i obsess about mother’s day number ten. on that day we returned home from a trip to manitowoc after visiting a friend, the dad hurried ahead of me to our apartment. i was unloading the car, herding our four minions, oblivious.
however, once in our apartment, i happened to look out the window to see the dad throwing something into the dumpster. this struck me as odd because the dad never took out the trash. 
so, being in the midst of a fucked up relationship where things were constantly being done behind my back, i went out & looked in the dumpster.
there i found a bouquet of beautiful flowers and a letter from the dad’s crazy stalker girlfriend. but instead of being addressed to him, they were addressed to me. 
would he have thrown them out if they were for him?
the dad had never gotten me flowers (or anything else) for mother’s day because “she’s not my mother.” i was actually touched that his crazy stalker girlfriend had gotten me flowers. beautiful flowers. despite the betrayal involved in her fucking the dad as we tried (again) to be a family.
he could have let me have the goddamned flowers. 
i would have liked any flowers on mother’s day.
but once again my mother’s day was in a dumpster….