vervain______

i am looking for clues.
i am not sure of what
but i am delibrate
seated in the dark
of my aunt's living room
while the rest of
the family laughs in the
warmth and light
of the kitchen.
each slide i hold
could be a possible answer.
my mother at 15.
the isolation and awkwardness
of a teenager easily shows in her eyes
but it is more than that
i know her well enough
to know when i see
the torture she still feels
thirty years later
moving there around inside of her,
the two inseperable.
i look at other slides.
my mother near a dog
her hands surrounding it
loving it
trying
to get away from the camera
her father, the photogragher
always held.
my mother feeding a horse
her hand holding out something
to its lips
the wilderness stretching out
behind her
filling
the rest of the frame.
my mother
pretending
there was no camera there
to document
her capture.
she hated it.
she was always told to smile
and then
she was told to smile
more.
in those days,
she would tell me
about the naps she took
and how they would put her
in a kind of blackness.
she would wake from them
heart racing, in a panic
not knowing where she was
or who she was.
or about the meals
she alone would have to make her
father from scratch after school
while her mother worked,
her sister in a convent
two states away
gone,
escaped.
i can see all of these things
in my mind
i can see her mother slapping her
face
because she said
"i am who i am because
i want to be."
little d,
my mother,
i love you so much
and
some part of me
will always
cry for you.