The Wraith — Part I
“Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.”
Those who do not have a strong sense of love and belonging… they know The Wraith.
I
When we speak of shadow work
and inner child lore
we must also mention ancestral wounds
and that time my aunt called me a “whore.”
(“your uncle would say, you look like a you-know-what.”)
My demons, now named, bow low
and at the end of the tunnel,
a warm light has begun to show.
For the first time, I believe I will get well.
Glowing hope, contorted from doom
The demons, it turns out, are merely parts of my past
each one a different version of me, still living in some childhood room
and none so far gone that she can’t be brought back.
But wrapped around my shoulder and hidden behind my laugh…
Entwined with my spine,
Warm rotten breath falling down my back,
Resides The Wraith, a being older than time.
This weeping, screaming, smoke-cloud of a mother
hums Christian lullabies — veiled lies with sweet tunes.
It’s the danger, not me, she’s aiming to smother,
and her needle-fingers dig deeper, perhaps meaning to soothe.
No child-piece of mine, not a version of me at any age,
this dark force is not just one member of my family tree —
she is the bark and the fiber making up every photo album page.
A misguided warrior, hell-bent on saving me.
Once blessed and hailed, a woman who’s greatest joy was to be married,
teaching the first daughters to be as demure as Mother Mary,
it was The Wraith by whom the burden of grace was to be carried
And she learned the hard way to never show it, but always be wary.
The Wraith knows, as all protectors do,
that once men become accustomed to you in any version,
be that the kind, the naive, or even the cruel,
they’ll then view playful deviation not as life, but as insubordinate perversion.
II
My ancestors were among the great colonizers
Born from lands of strategic strength and religiously protected morals
A convenient combination, masking blatant violence on behalf of misers
Painting it instead as the burden of pious duty and minor quarrels.
It looks so innocent in photo albums now,
Youngersters, newlywed, with babes in hand-stitched gowns of white
Harmless and far away, all sepian tan and brown
You’d never guess the silent battles these kids would learn to fight.
Church clothes and tractors abound,
All beaming faces and fresh-cut hair,
No mention of mothers gone missing or fathers no longer around…
All the wraith’s handiwork: no visible ounce of despair.
There’s no blood in my family history
because way back when, The Wraith was called “love,”
and when black sheep came home, a mother did not get her her hands dirty.
She sent them to slaughter, and only in silence would she grieve – all alone.
What is generational trauma
if not the abuse, rejection, and neglect
passed down to daughters from their doting mamma
tenderly packaged as lessons on “respect,” given a gift meant to protect?
III
“Feel the bench beneath you,”
the therapist says to my closed eyes.
“Let yourself sink into it.
Allow it to bear the full weight of your thighs.”
That was the moment I knew — I wasn’t alone.
I heard The Wraith’s bemused chuckle
and felt her swear she’d never allow my bones
to depend on a chair, which, unlike her, could buckle.
“No need to relax,” Maleficent cooed.
“You do what you will and rest assured,
I will always be here to hold and protect you.”
She is my snake, and I am her bird.
It was the first time I’d seen her,
this dark, desperate keeper,
yet I knew her right away.
She’d always lived in me and in me she’d promised to stay.
I was not afraid as I looked and saw the monster who’s arms held me,
even as my therapist’s eyes grew wide, and a ghostly pale clouded her face,
staring in horror at the screen where she had searched “wraith”…
I was not afraid of the shadowy keeper who, for generations, had studied the safest way to be.
“She smells like sulfur and feels like dread,
but the scars aren’t scary, they’re just the places she’s bled
in her mission to protect me — to keep monsters
out of my mind and away from my bed.”
“It’s only because she seeks absolute safety,
that left alone in in her care, I’d end up dead.”
It’s twisted and toxic,
hell, it’s batshit crazy,
to imagine that hatred is the only way
to protect a newborn baby…
But I’m not a green little girl anymore.
(Even ask my aunt: I look like a grown whore!)
So I can’t help but to thank my wraith for all of her woes:
for never letting me go, for loving me as if I was the only one —
because isn’t that the kind of love we’re all really wishing to know?
IV
I see her shadow now
over the shoulder of every mother
in every family photo,
and in the twinkle of the eyes beneath every handsome man’s brow.
In the cloud of smoke and ash and all that is rotten,
I see the silenced teen moms, the struggling addicts, maniacs and murderers…
Each disappointment cut out, burned, forgotten.
The Wraith’s righteous shame hides the stories of the family they chose to desert.
In her blackening gums and broken teeth, see the smirks of racists and rapists who,
Bibles in hand, wearing fresh ironed shirts and shining wedding bands,
stand shoulder to shoulder and head each a small home
of women and daughters who The Wraith has also known.
“Can you ask her to leave?”
The therapist asks me.
“No,” I tell her. “I’m not sure I’m ready
to say goodbye to her yet. I need to look
a little longer, so I will never forget.”
“When you are not fed love on a silver spoon, you learn to lick it off of knives.”
