listen, in this family you never show any signs of weakness; you close your door and close your heart and keep your **** mouth shut.
ivy cried in her sleep and cut her wrists open in a desperate last attempt to ask for help but all i was able to offer her was advil and a wavering smile. the truth is, my mother’s first boyfriend taught us how to fix a flat tire but he never explained how to ask for help or what love was even good for in the first place. and ivy never meant to hurt anyone but while trying to **** her sadness, she accidentally killed herself;
she was made up of choppy syllables and not enough, and i think it is important to note that not all little girls come from cherry lollipops, that some of us have eaten cereal from the box while hiding in the basement from a man with rough hands and angry eyes.
mum is made of a steady voice that she uses to tell me that my shirt bleeds neon, a color associated with nightclubs and drugs. she is made of secret sabotages and the palpable disappointment in her eyes when she whispers that donuts have 195 calories and she’ll quit smoking when i stop starving myself; she has excellent timing because whenever she asks this of me, i happen to be in recovery. she is made of jealousy and manipulation and the disease that shakes her bones and forces her to rotate through cycles of boyfriends and therapists.
richard was not ivan’s biological dad but he is the only father ivan has ever known and i do not say that as a good thing. some boys are made of skinny jeans and sharp jawlines and ivan is the kind of guy that is now a little deader than he was before he claimed his first girlfriend took his breath away. and when they talk about guys who use girls for *** and enjoy emotional manipulation they’re talking about ivan and his cloudy eyes; it is important to note that some boys have touched more thighs than textbooks and that ivan is going to spend the rest of his life making love as if he could gain it back. my best friend in kindergarten used to call our teacher “daddy” as if he could replace the one she truly needed, and ivan will never admit that he misses his father as much as she did. it should be noted that some boys are more sad than angry, and when ivan was twelve he started skateboarding because it was easier to fall on the pavement and feel pain than it was to inflict it upon himself with shaky hands.
we found what we loved and now it is killing us.
this family is hostage to blank silence and bleached walls, there are words we will never say carved into our throats and i know no one gets it but listen, when i was seven i watered my mother’s favorite plant until it drowned because i never knew when to stop giving, and i cannot grasp sanity or love in these decaying bones and i was never good at being honest with anyone, least of myself, but let me tell you.
if you wander here looking for validation or nourishment i feel sorrier for you than i do for myself, because you sure as hell won’t find either in this house with it’s crumbling ceiling and chained doors.
what is a home,
if not the first place you learn to run from?