letter to the woman who married my father

you are dead.
what did your weight amount to?

you deceived me at first sight:
with smiles, gifts, presence.
do you remember?

yet.
the moment the ink dried on the divorce papers,
and your ring slipped onto the finger of my
(absent) father,
in subtle and explicit ways
you excluded me.

stepmother
a name I never gave you
just like the ones in fairy tales.

and like in those tales
you brought me every form of humiliation.
you cast me out of my father’s (negligent) house
and into

the forest, the wilderness, the cave
full of dangers - and opportunities.

you, defender and preserver of the patriarchy,
never set foot into the same sacred mud
where you sent me (unwittingly)
hoping I would disappear.
wishing me dead.

yet.
there is magic
woven by the fairy godmothers who crossed my path
and told me that your pain
did not need to grow roots in my story.

I girl
I young woman
I woman
I lived. I live.

you,

are dead.

in your bile, my sisters were conceived
in your inherited poison
our half-made relationships dissolve into bitterness.

but you are dead.
how much did you weigh on my life?

in my body that is now a mother’s,
in my breasts, my womb, my thighs, my blood,
the joy of a woman’s body
burning with love
I mis-understand you more deeply with each passing day.

and I do not seek to offer the forgiveness you never asked for.

for who,
with a pointed and cruel tongue,
looks a child in the eye and says
I hates you
with such pleasure?

You are dead.
And I. I am light.

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NOTES:
I wrote this poem two days after my father's wife died, July 2022.
It poured out of me in 5 minutes.
All I wanted to say, in poetic form, release, magic of transformation.
The weight 27 years of sorrow, released.
And so it is.

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