you cannot shut the whole world off as
and when you please.
i was fifteen
my mother, forty-five, fighting
an incessant war with my headphones.
fewer words,
our days were outlined more with
slammed doors and dour glares,
conversations prisoned behind the fear
of exposing the soft-
ness in the way our hearts beat
or pumped blood
or ruptured
to spill over that   much    love. our hands
...

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