i'm blind, and you're drunk. i'm high, and we're in a magazine together. our picture memorializing the night he got beat up, a few weeks before he hits you hard enough to break your lip, the blood on your shirt looked cool, and the boy thinking your cute. i remember how young i was when i kissed you, how old you seemed. how close we had been. you weren't my sunshine, but you helped me discover a lot about growing up. and you know it, i see it when you look at me as we drink together in your car. i hope you're proud of me, my winter mother. my third mother was my first real girlfriend. without the grade school question, "will you be mine?" we started dating, kissing, it was sexual, but i refused sex, and you said you were falling for me, you liked my reason: "i'm scared you won't like me anymore." our graveyard visits, our art museum adventures, the times we smoked together, and when the car opened. how much you cared for me, and then how you left. you know more than i do how you've affected me. in your words, "how i've become a rounded person" but you're not 15, and you think it's too big of a deal. my last mother won't know how she's affected me, she thinks she's the child in our relationship. worried to call, that i won't want to talk. you don't know how much you've taught me, through your mistakes, when i cleaned up your vomit after you drank too much, when i was drunk enough to buy that coke, to do too much and be too excited. drinking soda to keep my stomach from turning. i swore i loved you again. but you won't know. you don't remember, and you never see when you affect me. my life has always been parent-child relationships, i'm learning or teaching, and i won't be afraid to admit it.