Peach Pit

I can’t shake this 

Empty feeling

The peach pit 

Scraping the bottom

Of my wallowing stomach 

It seems to always cave in 

Once I had thought it was full

Kneeling down on the bathroom floor 

Fingers trying to smooth out

The lumpy dumpling stuck in my throat

Sometimes I can gulp it down

Most of the time 

It lingers

Like a foul odour 

Grasping at the back of my gullet

Daisies

You fill me up with daisies

But I keep plucking at the petals 

Until grey ash remains 

Why can’t I stop 

Peeling away the petals

Why can’t I 

Let things be 

Immobilized by the weaknesses 

Of myself

I know for damn sure 

All this thinking is pointless 

All these drawn-out feelings 

Sunken eyes 

Leaking saltwater

I am better than this 

Today is just an off day

Accept that 

Ball today up 

In tiny fists 

Breathe a little longer


I Had a Dream

I had a dream that I was running, running fast, through muddy puddles, crying, wanting nothing but to be home. But the home in my head isn’t the one I see now. The home I wanted to go to was one where there had been many bad memories, memories I often forget, but somehow never leave my mind.


Tacky floral tile floors stained with exhales from nicotine gums. A tiny fridge placed in the corner of the room with no food, only alcohol, possibly some spoiled milk in the very back. A dark maroon rug, or maybe it was orange, and a brown couch. Most of the tables were milk crates. My room was a small porch where the cigarette smoke landed for me to exhale. Or is that a different house? The houses of my childhood all seem to blend together, but one thing always stays the same: piles of cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles. Why does it seem so far away? Why do I seem like someone else?

As my dream went on, I was just running, constantly crying, crying to be home, knowing that there is going to be no one there when I get there. I am surrounded by more and more mud. I can see my house down a back alley, but I can’t get to it. My feet are stuck, and I first lose my shoes, then my socks. Two people come to help me as they hear me hysterically crying before. I tell them I want to go home, I tell them I need new socks, new shoes, and possibly a whole new goddamn childhood.


Maybe this dream is from a memory of me trekking through mud with my mom while she was drunk when we got the car stuck in a back alley. I just want to go ‘home,’ but maybe this dream means that I’ll never get there. I’ll never be home because that ‘home,’ the ‘home’ where my mother is sober, and tells me she loves me and means it… doesn’t exist. And won’t exist. Maybe I haven’t accepted that. Maybe just ignored it. Ignored the little Paige that was so hurt when she was younger, and this stubborn adult Paige is just masking it all. Masking everything I was because I thought I was the problem, I was told I was the problem. And now, after years of suppressing those thoughts, I have to deal with them because they are breaking me.


The Fondest Memory of My Mother

When I was a child I saw my mother as this beautiful woman with long red curly hair that matched her painted red nails, in my eyes, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. However, these thoughts are now overlapped with drunken fights, harsh words, dishonesty and heartbreak. Unfortunately, now she is homelessly caged by an addiction she’s had for years, and I continue to question why. Why had she treated me the way she did, why had she abandoned me, most of all, could she still be helped?


I wanted to write about my fondest memory of her because I feel as though I’ve been upset about who my mother has become for too long. Instead, I’d like to remember my mother as this beautiful woman, this beautifully broken woman I remember as a child, which I know she still is. Although it is hard to see past the sunken cheeks, bruised fingers, cigarette-stained hair, and gummy smile. She had to have been a young girl in her 20s with her whole life ahead of her at some point, and somewhere along the line she just got lost, and with that, she lost me.


My fondest memory of her must have been when I was 9 or 10 [I am unsure what age specifically, all my memories seem to mend together at this point] I had done the dishes all by myself because I wanted to help around the house and I could tell that my mother was stressed. When I did the dishes I used too much soap, so if you had a glass of water it would taste like soap. I was just trying to help, easy mistake. But my mother freaked out at me, and screamed at me for doing the dishes wrong, she may have been drunk but my memory is very blurry. I went to my room and thought that it would be a good idea to ‘pretend’ to run away. I did this a few times when I was a kid, but never had the guts to actually run away [Until I moved out at 16, but that’s a different story]. 

I was hiding on the balcony that was attached to my room behind the corner until I realized I should have put stuffed animals under neither my blanket covers. I quickly tried to shove some stuffed animals under the sheets until my mother walked in. I didn’t say anything, I was just thinking about how my plan was foiled. She sat down on the bed and sincerely apologized. I don’t quite remember what she said, I just remember seeing the look in her eyes, and feeling like I had been acknowledged. I told her that it was okay, which I told her a lot after drunken screaming nights and abuse. But I remember that moment so vividly and the guilt she had for screaming at me. 

I don’t really know why I remember that memory, or if I am looking back at this memory differently after so many years, but every time I do, I miss my mother, honestly miss her, because the person she is now, is not who she was then.


That mother that I remember is buried deep, and I don’t know if I will ever see her again, I still love my mother now, but it’s complicated, and I don’t know how to help her, she needs serious mental help, and that isn’t something I can do. I’ve encouraged her, cried, fought, and after my brother had passed from an overdose I thought that was going to be the day the fog settled and she finally sought out help, but it’s been a year now and she is in the same place she was.


I know, there’s no sense being sad about it, or thinking about it, but I am a part of her and she is a part of me, how could I not keep wondering, hoping that this day won’t be the day I find out she’s truly gone…

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