20

2006

Hoping my arms will grow back. Knowing that not one of my stairs have ever been crystal. Wondering if real love is something you have to be genetically predispositioned to receive while I wait for someone with arms as long as mine. Feeling like an echo with nowhere to return to. Wishing I’d feel something the next time someone touched me. Feeling the tether tighten and fray. Looking for a back road to sanity. Wishing I could make my insecurities feel bad enough about themselves to leave, and then charge my demons rent. Having an affair with self hatred, with love sitting up late by the phone at home. Refusing to admit I need, afraid to cut myself for fear I’ll find I don’t bleed. Going to sleep wondering why I did, waking up wondering if I should have. It’s 2:30 in the morning, I’m sweating with the thermostat on 70 trying to get this poem out of me. I feel like my soul is on empty, I got 6 dollars in my pocket, it’s 15 miles to the nearest gas station and everyone wants the damn AC on. And all I want to do aside from reaching you is live from birth to death from breath to breath with nothing more than my children and all the love my Lord has left. Ignoring the answer. Trusting only in my inability to do so. Aspiring to deserve the right to die. Knowing my children are my heroes, as they are not just my blood but the oxygen within it. Blurring the lines between friends and family. Knowing hunger is a blessing. Listening to music to avoid to the cacophony of silence. Refinancing my faith and saving to get my pride out of the pawn shop. Wondering if it’s symbolic that I’m O+ and living my life like a 32 one year old poem is a little of what it’s like to be me. And this is not the part where I ask you for help, and this is not the part where I tell you it gets better, because it doesn’t. This is where I tell you that if you’re anything like me that no, it’s not just you. This is where I tell you that the walls will not come down even though the foundation cracks and the floor gives way. This is where I tell you the truth: that if you are anything like me that you sit in the dark cold and alone, and even if no one comes for you, that is fine; you can find your own way home.