Freud tells me I want to fuck my mother and
I don’t think this is what my parents meant
when they told me to get a university education,

I tell my therapist. I want my mother to see me
drunk, see me dancing with reckless abandon
in the middle of the dancefloor, spotlight on me.

I want my laugh to reverberate in her chest,
bounce off the walls, fill the room, so that
no one could ever deny my presence.

I want her to memorize my face in the moonlight,
as we venture out, heels stuck in cobblestone, and wonder
if she noticed the difference in the neon lights.

The way I seem to come alive when I know
that everyone wants me, does she want me?
Do you want me

the way these men want me, like I’m something
they can’t understand. “What did your daddy do to you?”
they ask, as I hold my mother’s hand,

navigating through the crowd till we end up here,
where I always do. Hold my hair back and be
the mother I need, wipe my tears and

tell me you love me
anyway.

–
Xiomarra Milann is an ambiguously queer pocha whose roots lay in Laredo, TX. As a mother, writer, artist, activist, actress, and educator, she loves to consider herself a jack-of-all-trades and hates to admit that she’s a master of none. Her work can be found in the Sybil Journal, Acentos Review, Querencia Press, Infrarrealista Review, and on her 6th grade creative writing teacher’s bulletin board, among other places. She is a lover of limericks, cats, and crying during movies and hopes in her next life she’ll be born as something with wings. Her work is forthcoming in Defunkt Magazine. Follow her journey on Instagram @90strashpop.