Portrait of the Alcoholic’s Daughter

I never know until it happens
the day you understand the hollow

cello in my living room dusty
candles on my dresser

clothes picked
      from others’ discards I find love

the same way I try to imagine
      it’s possible to build a house of straw

when it’s all there is to use
      the gypsy moth can’t think about shelter

her young birth parasitic flies and die
      my mother lit red candles on the floor

with faces of saints
      she didn’t bring them

the day I saw my first ghost
      I was six walking through

the narrow motel hallway
      in the middle of nowhere

there was blood on the headboard mom
      told me to stop telling stories

my brother was silent
       there was nothing to say

when this happened
      it wasn’t the first day I woke up

in the middle of a nightmare
      her screaming why

aren’t you happy
       I’ve felt guilty ever since

my brother begs me to stop
       he loved her in a way I never did

until I read the poem she wrote about me
       ten years before I was born

she died seven years ago now
       in her bed next to a man she didn’t love

but I sleep more soundly next to you
        than I ever have next to someone else

and I prepare for the sun to argue
       with the moon

about what time it is
      always trying

to outshine the other
      or be together

chronically far apart

Crystal Stone is author of two poetry collections, Knock-Off Monarch (Dawn Valley 2018) and All the Places I Wish I Died (forthcoming, CLASH 2021). Her poetry has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Hopkins Review, Salamander, Poetry Daily and many others. In April 2018, she gave a TEDx talk called "The Transformative Power of Poetry." Find her on Twitter @justlikeastone8, on instagram @justlikeastone, or at her website www.crystalbstone.com.