the tigers and how they lived

I want to start every poem I write resonating with the perseverant ache in my heart, echoing, “ow. …ow” like the words resemble it’s blood dripping out when I am actually bleeding internally. I am in so much pain, every day. This is not a poem I can write. It is a letter to myself. Gratitude is not lost on me, but I feel like everything I had, was all I will get.

This was my home. It was where I raised my daughter from two years to seven years old. She had a swing set, four cats, and one dog. A star diner, with the best cup of coffee play money could buy. A pink room. A blue room. A large window. Water balloon fights and birthday parties. Tricycles. Bus rides. A desk where she learned to write and paint and draw. A counter where she learned to bake with me, and make her own toast. A couch, where we snuggled, and watched T.V.

Dishes done for five years over and over and over again. Visitors like my mother who walked up those stairs before she died, and many others, who sat at our enamel top table for dinner. I danced. I laughed. I cried. I played. I lived there. I prayed to god to get out of there, knowing, and unknowing how special it was to watch my daughter come back with the mail and a handful of dandelions when she was five.

I went there today, & walked through the snow, to where our dog is underground, then I walked inside to shut off a light. It was like crawling back into my own carcass after a suicide, and it smelled just the same. I left a lot behind, and it is all untouched. Rotting. Disintegrating. The memories of love are gone, and forgotten, and I am visiting my own grave, looking around like nothing ever changed. I used to say that was my personal hell, and I was stuck in it, that if I died, any afterlife would be better than that place. I am in so much pain…but I had everything. A door. A shower, oh my god, how I miss my own shower, & the countless baths my daughter took while I read her books. A Christmas tree. A garden of pumpkins. A chalk board for sigils. Rainbow forks.

The styrofoam coffee cup half full is still on the counter from when I left, four months ago. Half a package of spaghetti. Scissors. An open fridge of spoiled condiments. My dog’s hair everywhere. The curtains on the floor. My daughter’s easel, and desk. My bed. Her bed. The bread box. Some books. My mirror, and rugs. My life I knew so far. My daughters childhood, abandoned. It hurts. I miss my pets. I want to go home. It is not possible, not even if the house was safe. No one dead is coming back, including myself. Memories and pictures are all that I have. I do not think anything that I go through is normal, and it’s not fair that my child has to go through it with me. I’d do anything to protect her from the pain, but I am afraid I keep failing.