The way my mother tells it,
I ran away. She didn’t shove me
out the front door at sixteen.
Afterwards, she remembers my little sister
possessed by a poisonous anger
but has no recollection of dragging her
through the house by her hair.
The history of our family was oral,
repeated to herself
in the splotched bathroom mirror,
where everything came out backwards.
Backwards everything came out
of that mirror, where she repeated
our family history, with no recollection
of dragging my sister through the house
by her hair, of her own poisonous anger, or me
at sixteen, pleading at our front door.
She didn’t shove me.
I ran away.