This is a poem I wrote on July 17, 2019. I was 19 and at the time living in my parents house, attempting to help take care of my terminally ill mother.
There’s A Beast In My House
There is a beast in my house.
It wears human skin
Walks as we do
Talks as we do
(Well, close enough anyway)
But it is not as we are
The beast warps what I see
It makes me believe I am awake when I sleep
And that my reality is a nightmare
So I question
As I sit at the kitchen table
As the orange overhead lights flicker and whine
As the kitchen tilts diagonally and straightens
Diagonally and straightens
(Diagonally and straightens)
As I drag my fork against my tongue and taste my blood
What is this thing?
The beast is my mother
Although consciously I know it isn’t
It has sucked the vitality out of her
And now will bare its teeth
At her intelligence
At her mobility
At her
Casualties of a paranormal war
I know it is not my mother
And also, how is it not?
The leech beast has consumed her
Soul
Mind
Consciousness
What is left?
Does only our shell make us human?
My mother is not the beast
But the beast is my mother
Interwoven, intertwined,
Conjoined twins
If they are inseparable,
What is there to seperate?
The beast is not my mother
But my mother is the beast
It’s a confusing dance to watch
Makes my head hurt
My eyes see stars
My world spins
The beast is too close
The wind bends trees outside the kitchen window
As our house lifts, groans,
somersaults and flips on its head
When she falls
Is it her or the beast?
When she falters
Is it her or the beast?
When she is no mother to me
Is it her or the beast?
If there’s any of her left
Does it matter?
About This Poem
When I wrote this, my Mom was heavily physically and cognitively disabled due to a long, strenous battle (“dance”, as she would prefer to call it) with brain/lung Stage 4 cancer. (Technically, lung cancer that metatasized to her brain, if there’s a doctor reading this.) Since age 10, I had watched the slow detoriation of this amazing, larger-than-life woman into someone I could barely recognize. As this poem captures, I had an extremely difficult relationship with her as a young adult. Things were never really resolved between us while she was alive; she died when I was 21 less than 2 years after this poem was written.
I remember being proud of this poem when I wrote it but also shocked and ashamed of how it represented my relationship with my Mom. I think I only ever showed it to my Grandma, god rest her lovely, supportive soul. I’m publishing it on here as it is a piece of writing I was and am proud of, and it represents an honest but difficult period of my life. There has also been enough distance from that time to now, so it doesn’t hurt in the same way to share.
Also - Mom can’t read and be hurt by it now.