My mother would’ve be happier
if she was a speckle of dust dancing at the tip of my nose
in a beam of crisp morning sunlight.
than she is being a woman, at this moment.

As I sit on a Persian carpet
eying my parents taking sips
from pitch black Turkish coffee
I think
I’ll blame the darkness they cannibalized in neat cups every morning,
for tonight’s freakshow.

The woman who memorized the geometry of my body
and the physics of lifting me up
has had bruises that match the coffee stains on a table cloth.

She is jittery, but its not the caffeine.
The bad habit, if you will, is my father.

I never saw them held as tight
as by early day silence,
when their lips puff soft murmurs of nothingness.

I only loved my father at this time of the day.
I realized. It is telling,  
the way you can chose to grip a glass cup with a circumference close to the size of a neck.
He handled his coffee the way he brought my mother to his lips.
There’s so much repentance to catch up with.

He was iron-fisted. so I taught myself to soften my grip enough to crack the theology in the curve of hips,
because it is painful and unfair
that I think
my mother would’ve be happier
if  she was in the speckles of dust dancing at the tip of my nose
in a beam of crisp morning sun-ray
than she is being my creator, at this moment.