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I am my fathers daughter.
I know this because he tells me every time he's drunk or every time I'm drunk
I think it started when my mother left
skipped town with the preacher
left me shaking in the bathroom holding my knees like a bad taste in my mouth
this is family
this is coming home or the lack of coming back
this is making toast for your mom when she's had too much wine and somehow ends up where it all began, in the apartment that was once hers but has since switched ownership
this house is not a home
without a mother
this house is not a home without the fathers daughter
we become glue for those who cannot become sober
we become wall, ball and chain, we become our fathers at such a young age we forget how to be anything besides drunk
we want to say that we built this house with our hands
with our blood
we built this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and stayed
i want to tell you that my father builds houses for a living but i have never lived in one
i want to tell you that my mother still asks how you're doing
i want to say that we built this house and it's never abandoned and we are never waiting by the windows
that we always have wood for the fireplace
we never drink alone
i never fall asleep in the shower
in this house our love keeps the lights on
you can feel it through the floorboards like vibrations through a phonograph through the hardwood through your back
we sleep monday through thursday and get paid on weekends to drink whiskey and slow dance in the kitchen
we roll around in bed trying to catch the light
our bodies become curtains or sponges
you soak me up like sunshine and nobody asks where i went
we always finish what we start
i become welcome mat, welcome back, come back,
come home
i turned the basement into a music room
when it rains for you it never floods
we built this house with our hands, with our love, with our blood
there is wood for the fireplace
the flames never spread
I am like cheap nail polish;
When first applied into a person's life I appear fresh, neat, immaculate.
But the next day I am chipped, broken, hurting.
It's not you, it's just the way you see me.
I put on a fresh coat to please you and make me seem fine.
But it's no good.
I'm not fine.
The new coats won't hide me forever.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Tomorrow I'll apply a fresh coat.
Tomorrow I'll be fine again.
Everyone you have lost is gone forever.  
If you try to call the dead, the phone won’t ring.
You won’t hear their voices.
The ground will shake like your wrists.
You will realize this sometime, when you’re in the bath and every nerve in your body is screaming at you to put your head under and count to a thousand.
You are more than a suicide note.
You are more than a suicide attempt.
You are more than cuts and bruises, and friends that abandon you and don’t even say hello in the hallways anymore.
People will leave you, daughter. People will leave you alone and shaking.
You’ll find solace in the most unexpected places, in the boys that look like they belong in the 1970s and in the vinyl that whispers to you while the sun is going down.
Eventually you will find the people that will bend the sky down to you so that you can touch the clouds.
They will become your motivation, they will become the glow in the dark stars on your bedroom ceiling.
You will forget that they are plastic, and often mistake them for the night’s sky.
Memories do not always hurt, it’s okay to be nostalgic but do not drown in it.
Do not drown in anything but love, daughter.
Love every leaf, every lover’s vein.
And every single time you think you’re going insane.
You’re not.
Remember that the door is always closed, but always easily opened.
Remember that you can leave.
Remember that you can take the next flight out, start a new life.
Remember that the world is in your piano hands.
You’ll meet someone and call them love because they don’t know the difference between the dull and sharp edge of a knife.
You’ll write poems.
Lots of them.
You’ll write enough poems to fill the walls in all of the rooms in all of the houses you have ever lived in.
You’ll scrawl them on the tree stumps you find temporary homes in while walking in the forest.
You’ll engrave them on someone’s bones after they tell you that they would rather die a thousand deaths than go a second without your energy warming their cheeks.
For every accomplishment, erase five shortcomings from your mind.
Be yourself before you forget who that is.
Be, daughter, be who you want to be;
Be who you know yourself to be.
When the world is sleeping on your shoulders at 4 in the morning, don’t wake it up.  
Take a deep breath, rock the earth into a deeper sleep.
Tell the walls your secrets because they don’t whisper.
Don’t tell anyone with a tongue something you wouldn’t want to end up floating back out of their mouths like a catchy song.
When you’re standing up on stage, waiting to start your poem, do not avoid eye contact.
Make everyone nervous with your metaphors.
Make everyone nervous with your passion.
You are the strongest soul you’ll ever be.
And when I die, shall we not meet again,
Remember that I am your mother, daughter.
And mothers, *always know best.
this is for my writer's craft class
I have so many secrets under my tongue.
I want to tell you that when I say "I don't care" I really mean:
I care too much. I see the way your shoulders curve downwards when you're with that someone
else that isn't me and I see the way you make yourself smaller to try and fit inside some definition
of love. I want you to know that I want all of you, so much of you at one time that the doctors are scared
I'll overdose.
What I mean is, you were it. And you are it. And you are everything.
And if you don't know what I mean by this, I mean- look at the stars.
Look at the ground, look at your feet. Everytime I see you I wish for roots.
So I can't move. So I can dedicate my stillness to never letting you make yourself smaller for me.
I want to tell you that when I'm silent I mean:
I hope you're doing okay. I hope you stop losing people.
I hope everyone who gets to see your smile knows how lucky they are.
I hope your bed curves to your back everynight, appreciating the freckles.
I know the constellations are jealous of your alignment.
I want to tell you that when I look at you and look away I'm thinking about imminence again.
How one day we'll see eachother and it won't be too late and I'll say oh my god, you haven't changed a bit.
And we'll laugh because who the **** am I to make any sort of comparison?
I want to tell you that when I say "I don't care" I really mean:
I care so much it keeps me awake.
I really mean "I love you even when I'm sober"

It all comes down to this:
Praying to Osiris to find me again.
Turns out I'm pretty lost without him.
i have racked my mind
trying to figure this whole thing out
the staying, the going
the threads we claim hold us here
& the people who've stopped to play a tune on them
i sometimes relate it
to waking up in waist deep snow
in our former selves
the us we wish we could give one another
the children we've sat on the shelves
trapped, like the looks
we leave behind in snow globes
i sometimes imagine ships
dragging the bottom to the sea of "me"
for sleep & pieces of my old self
to sell to the new one
like history doesn't repeat itself
it gets me wondering
if you too want an apology from the rain
or if you dream of burning family photo albums
and wearing the ashes like perfume
if you're anything like me
how i hope god chokes
on memories of me blowing out candles as a child
i know i shouldn't reference my reader  
but don't you know, the only difference
between alone & lonely is you?
that if my hands could talk
the only thing they'd be able to say
is "dear god we've missed you"
and how can you tell me it isn't love
when even the rain refuses to fall
in places where i've kissed you
i remember the day
you found my smile at a yard sale
it reminds me of how you'll leave
i wonder if when you go
you'll tell yourself
the person in the rear view mirror
is closer than they appear
fast forward three years
you're living on the coast binding books and your hips together
and i'm still in the small town that turned me into a sinkhole
you got out though, huh? you got out just fine, you have always been stronger than me
you have always been able to get well and get up without anyone bringing you bouquets of hands

you sit down to explain to her that love has made you reckless, that too many people
have been easygoing with your heart; let it cross the streets alone.
drunkenly leaving it in cabs in other countries
so for a while there you weren't sure who to give it to

my dear, I know now that you were never a hotel I could check in and check out of
you were in the best way possible, the mental hospital,
the time I woke up with nobody but the voices in my head (they were all yours)
(I couldn't leave until I got better)

you tell her you fell in love with a girl who never burned your letters,
who showed love in all the wrong ways, never picked up the phone, "honey", you'd say,
"she was nothing like you" ... "kept her hair light to contradict the dark inside of her,
didn't trust anyone to blindfold her and walk her down the street"
you try to tell her my name, but you can't
you can't remember what they call me, call me, call me,
I never picked up the phone

fast forward three years
you're living on the coast making love and mixed drinks a little too strong
and i'm buried near the sinkhole in town, next to the dog my dad kicked a little too hard
out the door of the house he lived in with my mother
i've got your name tattooed on my neck
the problem with us is that I have always loved you like you were leaving,
always left the door unlocked, like you might stagger into bed drunk with a few
different names on your tongue
in the spaces between breath, I love you, I love you
in the out breaths, I love you, I love you
in the inhales, I love you, I love you
maybe someday, I say when you're not looking
when you're not looking I think about how we have never looked out the same window twice
how it keeps me awake, that you and I will never be more than a story told to children
about the dangers of loving without breathing and breathing without sleeping,
I'm not sorry I lose sleep over you
the only thing apologetic about me is my mouth
and also my hands
and also my heart.
the problem with us is that you never believe me when I say that you deserve so much more
than lately
I'll go to my grave thinking you deserve firework eyes over dinner tables and hands
that hold more than they shake
you deserve a girl who is not more hero than honest
you deserve more than a good storyteller
the problem with us is that we settle for half way, never look both ways before crossing the street,
never care enough to anticipate a red light
you don't know the color of my eyes
some days I'm convinced the light's gone from them,
some days I'm convinced it's in your hands.
I am not going to lie anymore, it is easy to write about you.
It is a gut instinct.
It is muscle memory.
I kept the letters, the postcards.
The first one you sent is in bad shape; folded edges, crumpled body.
I almost set it on fire twelve times.
You don't understand how every night I stand outside looking at the stars
realizing that we can probably never see them at the same time.
There is nothing poetic about how we feed off of eachother.
There is nothing healthy about holding on to this.
But all I know is that when I talk to someone, I almost always say I'm sorry as a greeting.
Because nothing I ever say will be pretty anymore, I have a serpent tongue when you're gone away.
And I'm sorry that they're not you.
I will still get your words on me.  I will hold on to the pain of the ink seeping into my skin.
Forever doesn't have a fighting chance against the chokehold grip you have on my thoughts.
Instead of this train of thought, paper bodies.
Ignition.
Fire.
Think of me when the candle goes out.
Think of me when you're drunk again.
Instead of this poem, broken bottles.
Instead of this poem:
Blue sheets.  White pillows.  Your hair was never this color before.
Your poems were never about me.
Slam poetry in the way you threw my necklace in the river.
Find me waiting at the window for you to let me in.
You left the bottle open, it smells like whiskey in here.
Blue sheets but yellow flecks of sunlight and candlelight and streetlight.
The light has almost disappeared since you went away.
Instead of this poem:
Come back. Stay away.  I am fluent in ******* things up.
Fire.
Ignition.
Paper body.
Think of me when the candle goes out.
I hope she knows what she's getting herself into.
I hope she knows what your heart sounds like after a night of
comparisons between her handwriting and mine.                                                                                                                                      
I want you to know that I am through with dumbing
myself down to fit inside your god complexed hands.

Don't tell me I never tried to save us.
I wrote you songs with knives on my palms
and your ears were anything but listening.

I had a dream about you every night since you told me
you didn't know how to love anything with a heartbeat and hope.
I started sleeping again when you came back, and oh when you came back...                                                                                                                          

I am not sorry that my temper is as short as the lifespan of us.
I am not sorry that your smile is the only one that ever made me
want to wake up in the morning.
I am all pain and long long longing and she has always been
a storm with a heart dead set on your stillness.
Our problem is that I never stop shaking long enough for the dust to settle.

I've been writing with the same pen for four years and
you still only recognize my words when she plays them back.

Let it not be confused, foggy or incomprehensible-
you were the one.
Until the one became none and I stopped being a number when you stopped counting miles.

I hope she loves harder than a woman with dementia, relearning parts of you every morning
in the places you reserved with my first and your last- maybe next time.

Maybe next time, maybe next life will be different.
Maybe I'll be patient, stronger, I'll stop covering my smile. You'll stop pretending to be in love.
I will stop shaking and the dust will settle and her poetry will make you sick.
Her poetry will sprout evening primroses and she won't know that you always fall asleep before midnight
or that you're allergic to flowers that bloom when the sun is down.
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