Letters to Franz Kafka

Jaunuary 6

This day four years ago,
my mother died.

Last night, I saw you, Medusa, in a documentary on the History Channel
concerning your adoption of a baby.
You look so kind, even pretty, on the television
but I know that inside you, you
have a small black shriveled up heart;
your eyes are full of nothingness; or
rather full of only yourself,
which is the same thing.

What exactly did I do to you that you shouted at me
and made up silly rules regarding the care of my mother
when I was grieving her dying?

Why did you yell and bully my mother
during the last days of her life?

Did you get your full revenge
when you bent over Mom’s sickbed,
like an incubus
sucking up
the last dregs of oxygen from her dying lips?

Are you happy having achieved your vengeance?

Did you tell her when she was too ill to defend herself that you had won?

Did you really get even?

Did you say all the hateful things to her
that you were afraid to say
when she was well enough to defend herself?

I marvelled at your coprophagic grin
as you anticipated all your poisonous ideas
for the manipulation of the dying
and for the manipulation of the death
of my mother.

You were in charge. Brava!!

Did you get the satisfaction you craved?
Was it worth it?

You know, and I know,
that my mother did not want you to take care of her because she knew better than anyone what you were and
what you would do.

Did you not contemplate
just for
a
moment
that you might leave my mother alone to die peacefully,
which is what she wanted?

Or are sympathy, empathy and pity a foreign language to you?

Medusa, you cannot erase my stepfather’s name from Mom’s headstone!
You cannot remake my history no matter how much you try.
You can’t erase the 63 years that I spent as the focus of my mother’s life.

She loved me more than anyone else, yes, even your ridiculous father, and she told me so.

Was that your motivation for your hatefulness?

You could not get love from my mother unless you also showed it.

My mother loved you when you were a small child.

She still would have loved you
except you are incapable of that emotion.

You cannot make people love you by controlling
and
manipulating them.

Vengeance is a hollow victory because it shows the avenger,
not your victims,
in the worst light.

Your own dead mother would have been appalled to see what kind person her daughter turned out to be.

You are a poor sad excuse for a person and I have the gravest pity for you, Medusa.