Truth Begins in the Lies

Sorry my birth broke him, the man with so many names, my father. Sorry the (deadbeat/prick/asshole/no-good/sissy/coward) named me and later, ran so far away he pulled himself out of my blood, legally. Sorry something about him was broken but you swallowed that stone anyway, whatever it took to get away from your family, I’m sorry you grew up that way. Sorry you were kissing bottles before you were kissing boys, sorry all I know about you is trauma and a diseased bloodline; sorry this poem is about you already. Sorry there was something hiding inside me, sorry it waited 23 years
to burst out, sorry you had a sick daughter, only a child, and then another sick daughter, pulled out of life by damaged brainwaves. Sorry you gave up 21 days of your life to sit next to me in a hospital bed while my brain was exposed, waiting to catch the perfect seizure. Sorry I was never perfect. Sorry for the seizures, sorry I became a responsibility all over again. Sorry I needed some sort of family to get through it, sorry I chose to have the brain surgery, and sorry we never found out why this is happening to me. Sorry you haven’t learned the why isn’t important. Sorry you feel like this is all happening to you, sorry I can’t be strong for you anymore; sorry I need to put the oxygen on myself this time. Sorry, I think I want to survive this time. Sorry you’d rather be right than happy, sorry I keep bringing up the alcohol. Sorry I married him, that I put my love and happiness first, sorry you choose to push others away. Sorry you are lonely, sorry for the pain. Sorry for the time I forged your signature on my permission slip so I could perform my first grade school solo and I’m sorry you were so angry with me you missed it. Sorry you choose the bitter memories over the sweet let go; sorry you think selfish is a bad word. Sorry that I didn’t leave the house earlier and instead became the most of you. This riot in my bones, learned from you. Sorry I choose to fight for me. Our similarities, mother, they begin and end with our hands. Sorry I think I want to survive this time. I need to put the oxygen on myself first.

By SaraEve Fermin

Biography:

SaraEve is a performance poet and epilepsy advocate from northeast New Jersey. A 2015 Best of the Net nominee, she has performed for both local and national events, including the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles 2015 Care and Cure Benefit to End Epilepsy in Children and as a reader for Great Weather for MEDIA at the 2016 NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island. She is the author of You Must Be This Tall to Ride (Swimming With Elephants Publishing) and View from the Top of the Ferris Wheel (Clare Songbirds Publishing House). She loves Instagram: @SaraEve41