[A scream is a powerful and sad entity; it echoes the screamer’s desperation]
Today your scream wounded my hard-of-hearing ears
Yet I am resilient and you are not.
Today you hurt yourself, as you always, always do.
Today you immerse yourself deeper in your darkness
In the loneliness of being who you are.
Your scream, Mom, resonated across the Atlantic
It angrily took off from the southern hemisphere
and landed on a northern runway, here
Your scream penetrated my ear canal
and went straight into my heart
– that far reaching quality that screams posses
Yet, this is your scream and not mine
It spoke more of you than of me
It spoke of you as a mother
Brought echoes of your inability to love
of your irascibility
and anger that haunted my past.
In my immature years
Your screams drilled holes
And pierced my delicate soul
– another quality that screams have.
My ears are sensitive and emotional.
They may hear less but they are also accustomed
to perceiving hissings and ringings
that my brain produces to counteract
my hearing loss.
This condition is called tinnitus
Tinnitus is always here,
Mornings and nights,
Ringing inside my ears.
It could drive me mad
But I am smart, Mom.
I have learned to defend myself against my losses
and what my brain produces:
I let go.
(And I wear hearing aids)
…..
It takes me a few hours
But I sit down and write these words
In a conscious effort to exorcise the pain
I owe it to myself to store in my brain only the sounds
I need to hear.
I owe it to myself to rise above you and your anger, Mom.
I let go.
arizona-me 