My mother speaks like a teenage girl, the man she loves doesn't tell her which party he is at tonight.
I sit and listen giving her advice I've never even used in the life I've barely lived.
I wish she would be less naive as if she were the younger me.
Do we grow into more mature versions of the women who raised us?
My little brother is slowly realizing our family is not perfect, it only took reaching double digits, something people normally learn once they reach adulthood.
I used to lock him in my room, cover his ears, put him to bed every time my mother drank and my father screamed, the oldest not even able to make it up the stairs, his speech slurred.
I miss him.
He stays in my room now, my old mattress, he unpacked my books from the boxes I had them neatly sorted into, is he reading them?
He doesn't say much when I see him, he asks me how I am and tells me he loves me when I leave, I raised him, does he know that?
I sit in my new bed in my new room with the man I love, my cats cozy in the window, a new family, why do I feel like I abandoned a child who was never mine?
My mother is the younger me, and I left her to defend herself against her high school crush, why was she never enough?
My father hasn't loved since my mother left him, we don't talk much, whenever I see him he looks more aged and he gives me some sort of gift, something special he picked out just for me.
I can tell he misses his kids, my father is too generous.
He reminds me of the little boy I raised.
I want to tuck him in as well, let him know it's okay and that he still has me.
Why do I feel such guilt to raise my own parents?
My sister has a family now, she still picks me up sometimes in her messy car just instead of her backpack with homework spilling out in the backseat it is now a bag of diapers and sippy cups.
She's always on the phone with a babysitter or fighting with the man she gave her whole life to, I wish she would be only my mother again.
I always felt the need to protect my own big brother, afraid for him.
The sound of him playing piano echoing through the house.
The piano no longer lives with our family, and neither do I, I wonder if it misses our old wood floors and the sound of spirited kids running around as I do.
My mother speaks like a teenage girl because she is one, she's still writing love letters to my father and painting pictures in her dining room.
Her son right beside her making music and drawing flowers.
My mother is wise, but she pretends not to be, as if it will somehow preserve her youth, I know she's smarter than that.
My mother just needs someone to believe in her, her kids wrapped up in her bed again, we are all nursing an empty nest.
