In the back of my mind I see you struggling, I see you streaming tears wiping them off the floor with toilet paper, I see you losing the air from your lungs with each day.
I do, I do see you, but you don't see me.
I've found the air from your lungs and i've been drifting in this fog for 17 years looking for somewhere, something, someone to call home.
You never tried to find me while really I was always in the same spot, waiting for something meaningful to hit me like a ton of bricks.
Instead, those bricks weighed me down to the bottom of the ocean and I couldn't get the ropes off my ankles before deciding to breath in the salt water.
It took a new life to swim to the sunlight and when I reached the top I was out of the fog.
Only then had you found me, soaked, broken *****, gasping for air, barely alive, and I had given up the fight.
You shook when you asked why I had hit the bottom, you asked as if that question belonged to you,
But there is a difference between us.
I can't explain the fog to someone who's not out of it, so please find where you are supposed to go.
a.n.F

You're having a baby
A baby, a tiny human being that holds the future in those little gripping fingers.
Now, when I will hold this baby all I will see is a sad 17 teen year old grabbing the world by the ***** while thinking he's falling off the edge.
Everyone will tell you it's okay, everything's fine, everything will be alright and it will.
But when you feel like it's not, when you feel like whatever choice you just made put your happiness at stake I'll be there.
You can tell me it's not okay and i'll see that your drowning in the pressures that this world forces and I promise you i'll try my best to make you feel better.
I'm not going to guide you or tell you how to make it through, i'll do what your mom did.
Tell you how I was broken just like you were, how I felt like I couldn't move without feeling so hurt and i'll tell you that your strong and your beautiful and you know that no matter what you do, you can fix it or make it better.
So i'll tell you this once, you will be okay.
Whatever your name is, i'll love you until the end of time and welcome to this *******.

I CAN'T FIND WHAT ONCE MADE ME WANT TO WRITE
It was an inspiration that just whirled up out of thin air, went through my ears, and bam!
There it was, a beautiful piece of sadness describing the most tragic heartbreak anyone could image out of just one simple thought of agony.
I had this lighting speed of easiness, the words came so rapidly, I was screaming in the quietest form.
Now I skip to all sides of the conversation, to each bulletpoint in the topic, and my second guessing makes me write maybe too many times.
I want to write each letter with a dignity and a form I didn't erase.
The words will have already wrote themselves without a re-reading to know if it makes sense.
For ***** sake, no more lists.
I want a story of what has been forgotten by my finger tips.

My heart hasn't been hurting, i've spent all this time healing.
The blood doesn't pool onto the floor anymore and there are no more risks at dieing in the hands of oneself
So is that the reason why poetry is no longer a language I speak?
I thought I was fluent.

I changed my way of life to stray as far away from you as I could,
But you’re friend is right.
I carry you with me,
Beside me,
Behind me,
On top of my chest,
And always in the back of my head.
Sometimes I hear the things you would have said.
I’m forever learning about this thing called love but,
No one told me about the love that hurts,
the love you can’t let go of,
the love which breaks a part your soul and leaves you a whole new person,
or a whole new shell of one.
Now here I stand on my own when by now we were supposed to be standing in our own home.
I will be okay and so will you.
We were only eachother’s beginning,
but I will think about you until the end.

a.n.F

After getting off the phone with you,
I sit in the bathtub to make sense of the feeling that i'm drowning.
I blame it on the water, my soul isn't heavy it's the soapy water encasing my body.
It's time to be honest.
I don't pick up the phone because i'm scared of the repercussion.
I'm scared to feel myself sink back into a shell that I threw away a year ago with the memory of the pain.
But you know me, I don't throw anything away, I tuck it into a dark corner and say "maybe i'll need it again."
I don't talk a lot because thoughts of I miss you, come home, you made me so sad, you made me so happy, you made me ME, keep running through my head that an unmeaningful conversation about what's on TV doesn't flow.
No, I don't remember anything from when we were young i've hidden it from myself, but yes i'll tell you I remember just so you can tell the story because I know it makes you feel something.
Yes, i'm just as numb as you are and I know you didn't ask, but everytime you say you're just tired I want to say "me too."
Tired of fighting, tired of displaying feelings, tired of hanging myself out to dry after the flood has passed.
So now, I sit in my bathtub moving the water with my feet, remembering doing the same in the river water last time you made me feel pain.
a.n.F

I've been with you.
You stared at me from across the room with a smile that spoke of the silence that we were not breaking.
A silence we didn't mean to fill as four years had torn us apart and I can not believe that I can see you.
10 feet away in a lawn chair in our sister's living room and that's you.
Six feet, curly long hair, gentleness.
I ask you "what?" because i'm awaiting an explanation and a next movement, one more thing to rip me to pieces and throw me down the gutter and you answer "nothing" with a smirk and a feeling of content.
That's when I realized I didn't want to leave,
I could stay in that moment forever instead of  holding onto that memory indefinitelty.
I'm not good at saying goodbye or hello because i'm scared of what happens before, after, and inbetween.
I'm a coward, carrying a white flag surrendering to the sound of my heartbreak.
I didn't write about you because I didn't know how,
After hundreds of poems, thousands of feelings, so many many tears being dropped in your wake, I didn't know what to say
And I didn't want to leave you.

How can you hate when I have learned to love someone as much as I love you?
You were the one who taught me how to love in the first place.
Why does the gender of who fits my soul hurt yours so badly?
How can you look in my eyes and not find me?
I have found happiness and home in the arms of a woman and that makes me no longer your daughter.
You're ready to hand me over to the devil because I held something from you for so long.
I cannot change for you, I cannot be someone that you wish I was because the love I found is more important than the betray you have served me.
Thank you for everything but I will not tear myself apart to claim a spot in your heart.
You said your love was forever but forever doesn't exist.
I'll send you the wedding invitation, your spot will be saved.
Find it in your heart to love me again because you'll have my love forever,
i'm not so concerned with things that do not effect me.
Your home was once my home so i'll forever welcome you to mine.
a.n.F

I'm gonna tell you about the girl of my dreams,
how each ******* smile pulls my heart strings into knots
and fills my tummy with butterflies, moths, and bees.
The way her head dips into my chest
is the thought in my head on lonely cold nights
when I keep waking up at two in the morning.
Safety, home, mine
are all words that were so foreign until her arms hooked around my waist.
Each day is a talk of future and memory and all of the inbetweens mixed.
Through the tears and the arguments, there is still cracked smiles that scream
"This is my baby"
That she is, so precious and I am so unworthy.
For the working together, the movie cuddles, the secret kisses, the smiley hand holding, the effort, the given happiness, I am so grateful.
She is my whole, my one, my heart, my soul.
I've found what my light has been searching for
and she is goodness, remembrance, astonishment, caring, embracement

Although you are not home,
everyday is littered with traces of you.
I'm sorry that I missed the phones calls and i'm sorry I cannot write.
All these years you have been gone have ironically filled my empty heart with the greatest of sorrows.
Now these years are ending and everyday there is hope that i'll see you tomorrow.
I'm not here to justify or to make right of what has gone so wrong.
Alright, fair enough, we weren't given the best life but now it's all we've got.
I thought I needed you all along but now I truely need you.
I need you to be better and I need my healthy brother.
Now there's only taking your meds and no more playing pretend because travis just as much as you need us, we need you home.

The cards have been dealt and this time I ended up with the winning hand.
Finally were all together again under the same roof,
for only the second time.
I feel this new air in my bones, a lighter feeling in my head.
and right now were just getting to the part where we root up all our sorrows, put them on the table, and see if we can all win the game.
We are the winning cards aren’t we?
Or are we destined to lose?
I’ll take sleeping on a couch next to the spot where the devil has burned a hole just to see you everyday.
I’ll sit with you as we don’t speak because we were never taught how to go through our struggles side by side.
I’ll hug you again just to feel like again, the world has been placed in my heart.
I still do feel the sorrow, I ache late at night when the lights turn off and I lay awake.
But i’m sure we all do.
I don’t know if this is winning,
but I don’t feel like I’m losing anymore.

a.n.F

You used to be good at this,
the silentness,
the subtlety,
the no questions asked, no answers given attitude.
Now, you’re not thinking and you’re an open book to all who are willing to read.
Some people don’t want to read your book they only need the pages to burn.
Put yourself back on the defensive,
take every lock and key,
board up all the windows,
and don’t let the flames touch you.
Aren’t you sick of feeling stupid,
helpless,
worthless?
Stop giving people what they want and start giving yourself what you deserve.
This isn’t you.
Wake up before your house catches fire.

a.n.F