HOMUNCULUS
                A Love Letter

Dearest love of my life,

We're through, bitch!  Done, history, finito!

You think you can make your points by slamming  

the phone on me a few too many times after 

those moaning mantras, hypercritical cant, all that 

cynicism, atavism, anatomism, a cosmos of isms...?

Well, you have. You don't love me, and never did,

you with your "You could be so....if only...."

If only I chalked my cheeks, 

hacked my hair, smeared my lips 

accentuated unfortunately beady eyes

dressed right, fussed right, mussed right,  

pissed right – hell, I could be so... if only...

for only so long.

To heck with it all! 

There's more to me you haven't noticed 

shuttling to your salon or bridge-game and back: 

I play piano, write and paint, am a good mother 

(even if I did, once, stop for gas at night locking 

the sleeping baby in the car, safely pocketing the keys.) 

“Marsha would never do that!” 

(Meet my sister-in-law June Cleaver).

Well, I've had enough. I'm me --

ugly as Eve's sin, follicle-challenged, 

foolish, zany, stupid over money -- and 

I can't undo the breach birth I'm thinking 

started this whole thing, or was it when you 

locked hands with my (to-be) father in that old 

movie, in a bag of smarmy popcorn? 

Yes, the breach, like it was my fault I didn't 

know my head from my ass, and still don't, 

but maybe it was your fault, maybe it was you 

who were upside down -- ever think of that?

Look, stop sending those kitschy little notes

each December taped to my father's blood money.

I have news: you killed him, like you're killing me. 

It doesn't take much to kill a child – and an adult 

still carries that child, a homunculus, forever -- 

My sister and I always said our brother was 

the favorite daughter, a little joke we have -- 

But you! You're the big one -- so, please, don't call, 

don't write, you've got the wrong address, 

the wrong people, -- forget the postage, have a flat

run out of gas, get more hopelessly lost than you  

already are.   Because all your chirpy notes 

are just kindling for the fire in which contort the 

silhouettes of witches on freaky flickery brooms  

all of whom look just like you!

Copyright Julianza Shavin 2004