Poetry by Finn Wilde

               ​Robin Kuusela CC




Motherwound 
​
I. Preventing too much blood loss

“A mother is forever.”
“you only have one
mother,”
they all say,
as if she didn’t build my cage out of her own ribs,
as if I don't put on a jacket of her forever gravity and 
wear it like a badge of honor every day.

As though the wound doesn’t still bleed every time
I pick at the scab, 
from when I grabbed the sharp steel knife she used to carve herself into a marble house,
while I sat and learned how not to need
from someone who spent so much of her time in the kitchen.
But marble is too hard on a little girl’s knees,
and tears dry quickly and silently from the heat of the stove,
the one I’m still learning to yank my hand away from.

II. Defending and cleaning the area

My mother has a story she likes to tell 
about taming me,
her wild rainbow child,
how when I was one, I spit out my food at her,
and she taught me to keep my mouth shut
by smacking me with that same silver spoon she claims I was born with in it.

My mother married a man who never uses
his fists, but keeps her voice in a jar on
his nightstand.
I keep her voice, too, but closer, on the other side
of the mirror,
the ghosts of not good enough that lived
inside her lullabies are still playing on repeat in both of our heads,
a bad song we can’t stop humming.
 
III.  Repairing and healing 

Every time
she tells me to suck in my gut, she is speaking
with her own mother’s voice. 
Her hand guides mine to put my fork 
down, 
the same invisible hand that slapped it out of hers,
I am lying when I pretend I do not want seconds.
I’m lying when I pretend I’m not hungry for her approval.

I know
she is hungry, too.
I reach for crumbs of validation from any stranger’s hand,
just as she reaches for a glass of low-fat buttermilk for dinner, 
like the magazines told her, 
to put out the fire of hunger in her belly.
 
“You can’t divorce your mother,” they all chime in.
But why not? 
Has she not folded herself small as the dollar bill that 
she traded for my security thirty years ago?
When she put all her hopes and dreams into my basket,
 and set her water-child sail to the future 
she could not afford,
standing still as the whisper of the “I love you” 
that never made it to shore with me,
I learned to drown long before I learned to swim.
 
My mother taught me not to cry, 
but I know she’s just as used to leaving as I am.
I want to say, 
I understand
that every road to the toxic waste dump was paved 
with good intentions, 
that she is the child herself unspoiled 
by the rod she held in her quick twitching hand,
that all her parents wanted is the same she wants for me: 
the best.
 
My mother is Peter Pan, 
doesn’t know what to do with her own rogue shadow,
still searching for that needle and thread, 
for someone to sew the same heart that beats in me right up,
both of us looking for our missing half in all the wrong places.
 
IV. Maturation (strengthening) 

My mother didn’t choose herself, 
but she chose me,
just as I am choosing me 
when I serve those divorce papers that maybe she won’t sign,
that will yellow with age, 
gathering dust and tear stains with my birth certificate in the bottom drawer of her dresser,
where she also keeps herself,
an old party dress that doesn’t quite fit,
she tries herself on for size,
 shakes her head, 
and slips into something more comfortable.
  
I hope I’ve taught her that softness can be home,
and that wounds heal 
when you just stop picking at them,
and that the scars will always remain part of us –
just as she will always, always be 
my mother. ​

​

 ​Finnley “Finn” Wilde (they/them/theirs) is working on becoming the “most relatable new voice in poetry,” whose first publications include Oral Hygiene Sweetheart in the Preposition Anthology. They are communications professional in their 9-5 job, but fully emerge as themselves outside of work hours as an LGBTQ+ centering, body positive, and trauma informed yoga teacher, the host of Make My Gay podcast, and one half of the creative design business Make My Gay they’ve recently started with their partner, with whom they reside and parent two cats with in Central NC. As a triple water sign, Finn has absolutely no chill and all the feelings, making poetry their ideal love language second only to food.

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