how loud should i holler
when you knock me back down
if i concur i belong
here on the cellar floor
how long should i wallow
in my sense of incompetence
when you berate me for
not being or doing more
oh the hallows and shallows
of my once wee gray growing
gentle fontanels of unknowing
and soft valley mapping brain
so dr daddy psychologist
how did you deduce what might
bloom from your first seedling
while watering her with
lies bitterness and shame
oh i stayed so loyal so blue
so blind so true to the notion
that you were broken and
needed me as your anchor
instead you were the weight
that sank me like an albatross
around my negating psyche
as you sucked the very marrow
from my aching pulsating
neck to feed your vampiric
urges til what remained was
an amanda doppelganger
tell me dr daddy psychologist
did you dream of using your
scylla and charybdis to take
down the family you stacked
on prior corpses
i was left
alone
barely there
a shell
a cut-off-tongue —
a shaky-semblance-shadow…
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Amanda Weir-Gertzog (she/her) is a poet, gerontologist, and eater of too much milk chocolate. To compensate for her prodigious reading habits, she also writes book reviews. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her family and pets.
“i was left
alone
barely there
a shell”
Amanda, your poem is so full of emotions, I can feel it deep inside my soul.