Tatiana

By Joey Colby Bernert

᠅

Tanya,
I remember your perfume,
before I remember your touch.
Diamond rings flashing under kitchen light,
gold anklets, platinum studs,
a crown assembled from debts and lies.
You strutted, not walked.
Your cackle filled the house,
a laugh so wide it seemed to shake the walls.

Your voice was pitched high, elevated,
every word a dagger.
You knew our weaknesses
and spent cruelty like currency.
Friendships: sabotaged.
Private moments: mocked.
I could not even shit in peace
without your screaming filling the air,
sometimes at me, sometimes at shadows.

You locked me in the green room,
the guest room no guest would enter,
closets sagging with clothes no one wore,
magazines yellowing in piles,
garbage of another life abandoned.
I cried until my throat closed,
until no sound could pass.

You said I talked too much.
So you taught me silence,
four walls, locked doors,
hours carved out of my body.

Empathy is not strength but a slow leak of shame.
You never leaked.
You were lacquered and polished,
Beatles on the stereo,
Eminence Front on repeat,
while you staged your brilliance
for parties, for church, for the mall,
anywhere an audience might gather.

Your jewelry cost more than food.
Your laughter cost me years.
Even now, I struggle to reconcile
the woman in red lipstick,
walking like she owned the world,
with the mother who believed
glamour was the same as love.

I write this to say I remember.
Not with forgiveness,
not with love,
but with the clarity of someone
who has survived you.

᠅

Joey Colby Bernert (any/all) is a disabled, queer, and neurodivergent clinical social worker, statistician, and MPH student. Joey is the Editor in Chief for the Orichalcum Tower Press. They are a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. They work to with rural populations to provide treatment for substance abuse.