i, memory

She wanted to hold me. All the time. She wanted to feed me. To dress me. To brush my hair and pet me. She wanted in some part of her she learned from movies and her own mother to be a good influence in my life. To teach me about love and protection. But somehow in a way neither her nor I understood, she became disgusted when I lay in a pool of blood and water between her legs, wrinkled and curled from my nine month gestation, shrieking from the shock of passing through her dark body into a world of light. She became disgusted that day by the way she had been pinned down, her legs held apart, arms grounded, mouth stuffed, eyes left to gape. Her memory had no choice but to reject with primal violence all reflections of that day of her life. But for all its trying, there I was, forcing her to remember. So she had no choice but to reject me, with all the primal violence of her fist and belt and cutting board. I felt that she loved me between welts. But in the end, I was the memory she couldn't kill.