I Forgive You

My mother will tell you that I was a quiet child
 I will tell you that I was born screaming and everyone looked away
 I once went 119 on the highway and no one stopped me
 I once dug my name into my thigh and no one bothered to pronounce it
 I once called my body sand
 Line drawn with a razor and no one crossed it
 That kind of invisible can make a girl disappear into any mouth
 I have spent years dreaming of a girlhood with my lips not stitched into a seam
 Imagine if my mother could say she loved me without looking away
 If my father knew my phone number
 If there was never a boy burying my face in the hard wood
 I would be anchored to resentment if I did not let time take hold of memory
 Witness me
 Look at the girl I was, look at the me I am
 Hear me say "I forgive you Mother, for all the years you could not see me"
 Searching for a quieter life
 No children to hold to your breast
 I forgive you Father
 Even though you are a language I do not speak
 I forgive you boy
 Who found me weeks after the ambulance did
 I forgive you loves that did not love me back
 I forgive you my love for each night your thrash inside the darkness of your head
 Drag yourself across the rocks of memory
 I forgive you Self
 For all the years I could not love you
 This is the most resounding work song
 To say I forgive you
 I forgive you
 And when I do not
 I forgive myself for that too
 When I wake with the past wrapped around my throat
 I forgive myself for that too
 Take my filthy name
 Let me call myself bird
 Let me call myself one hundred days of laughter
 Call myself ice cream on the porch despite the hot day
 Call myself the sweet insides of a strawberry
 Let me call myself girl
 Let me name myself for all the women I could have been
 Tighten my eyes
 Lay my body warm, flat in the dirt
 I plant my baby teeth like seeds and up grows a girl
 That can lay in the sun where no man will touch her
 Each hole I dig I whisper
 "I'm alive still and isn't that more than what I was supposed to be"
 Each hold I dig I whisper
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 'I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 "I forgive you"
 Until it is true