It gets a little old
When people say
“It’s darkest before the dawn”
“Rainbows come after a storm”
But I’d been sitting reading all day next to a window,
Listening to pouring sheets of rain outside,
And I find myself soaking up the way gold drapes across the world afterwards.
It’s as if the sun is screaming,
I made it
I made it
I made it.
I only ever drink cherry Kool-Aid.
It’s sickening sweet red and sometimes I need that,
Sometimes darker is a little too philosophical for me.
But there’s no more cherry left,
Only blackberry grape,
And I sigh as I pour myself some.
Still…
The flavor is sweeter than I remember
As I breathe crisp cold outside in winter overstaying its welcome.
I come downstairs the next morning,
Hoping someone made blackberry grape Kool-Aid.
Flames are licking upward,
Scorching ashy smoke billowing across sky like the tail of a jet long gone.
I stare at the destruction with eyes wide, drinking tragic splendor.
Who gave Catastrophe permission to be this magnificent?
And you say my name as if
There is something attached to it,
As if I am not some invisible mess of thoughts and feelings and romanticized summer evenings.
I’m beginning to think this is bliss, magnificent bliss:
To be known
To be known
To be known.
I thought I was my mother
We share chocolate hair
And pretty glass eyes.
But my father gave me his
Justice
And integrity
and his ability to see what’s real.
Who does that make me?
Some bloody teeth-bared mix of both of them?
When I reach for the dagger by my side,
Am I fighting for their monsters or mine?
Darling, you admit your life is difficult
And blink when I have empathy.
How many people have you told and cringed because theirs is harder?
Come with me.
Life is hard, yes,
But we can dance on the graves of pasts we’ll never miss.
My hands are dry cracked bleeding,
Split open red.
I wash my hands too much, isn’t that tragic?
It must speak of my raw soul,
The way I scrub away
The mean customer last week and
The way my friend looked at me when I said I couldn’t make it.
I wonder which path is better:
Leave the germs on or wash them off?
They built me as a bomb and told me to destroy.
But I would not be their weapon.
I took my scissors and glue and stuck flowers to myself, scraps of torn-paper poetry to my lips.
I wrapped my scars with the sunlight melting the ice caked to my soul.
“Who taught you to love so grandly?” my friends wonder,
And I feel the daisies wrapped in my hands clutched tight. “No one but myself.”
And you say you love me but I think it must be the way the ice loves the rainy winter roads:
Coldly and stiflingly, with an unwanted sort of slipperiness to your smile.
I fear the ditch waiting for me to skid off the road.
Please, I whisper.
My soul is too tired to be sad.
I am grasping for Dreams but they’re gone, they taunt my growing older fingers.
Why can’t I breathe?
Why don’t Dreams take me by the throat and give me breath like they used to?