Paper a la Mode

gone~
You lay there. Gone. Arms cut and bleeding. Slices of your skin cut away by your own hand. I stand there and stare at this person, my mother, lying in her own filth and turmoil. You are breathing steadily, almost peaceful. Your cuts are superficial, the screaming for attention kind. The kind you make when you have run out of ways to express your grief. The same as what feels like a thousand times before this. I want to kick you. I want to pull your hair and scream in your face. Instead, I sit and hold your head, stroke your hair, tell you everything is going to be ok. To weak and alone to do anything else.
You look up at me. Your eyes empty begging black holes. Only able to feel your own pain, only able to suffer your own loss and anguish. Nothing else matters to you right now in this moment but making your own pain go away. You can't see the pain I am in, 12 years old holding my bleeding mother on the dirty bathroom floor. You don't see the terror in my eyes. You don't hear it in my voice. Nothing matters in this moment but you. Nothing matters at all but you.
I haven't forgotten