Whip me
into shapes
of low, submissive 
apology;
               put your name
on each corner of the cudgel
you scour me with.

There's a reason—when it comes from you:
harsh reflections drawn from your own
dissatisfaction and insecurity,
the daunting vacuum of the future—
there's a reason it feels right
for me to take such heavy-
handed excoriation.
I deserve it.

When you hold peril above 
my head, I remember my mother
pleading, what could she do for me,
and my barbaric answer,
                                          kill me.

I look (admittedly with shame)
at the several scars up and down
my wrist and arm;
                                I recall
the frenzied self-inflicted batterings.

Life before you resurrected me,
I've told you, though it's impossible
to really know; but when your eyes
 widen with insanity,
  with mania,
   with sick rage,
it's a mirror to my history.

Not only do I deserve the castigation,
you deserve the patience I got.

I had wanted less and less,
 to be distilled into nearly nothing.
You want more and more,
 to overflow with endless bounty.
Neither of us excelled to such extents,
 but in self-abasement our tears are one.

Bash me with disdain
 for wanting nothing more,
  you have the right if I believe
   that you should humble your expectations.

What's more difficult,
to grow from nothing into something, or
to shrink from dreams to a single datum?
Hopefully somewhere
 in the middle,
  where we draw each other,
   is the right place for us.

Certainly it's more difficult
to be found in your circumstances,
nomadic, isolated, uprooted;
I can never fathom the horror 
of watching your mother deteriorate,
jaundiced and dessicated until
she finally passed away.
    Without Mom I would
      have self-destructed.

You're right
 when you tell me I don't know you.
We have our differences,
  but I want to give you
   the things I have that you never did.