twenty four
days
since thoughts met
action
met data
met words
and I don't know
how or why I ever stopped writing.

The hardest part
about living through
trauma
is when someone wants to
claim you
and use your suffering as
a badge of honor in that
they helped you get to a better
place and time in your life
but all you can hear is how
they introduce you to others
and leave all of your trauma
attached to your identity
instead of in the past where
it would die
and you know,
maybe this has a negative effect sometimes
like,
say,
for example,
a third grade boy introducing himself
to his teacher and immediately
explaining the sad tale of abuse and
people gone astray
because up to that point all he had
known was how to be injured,
how to be a trophy
for mother dearest
after all,
there can be no heroes
without victims
and some heroes find it better
to just keep a victim around to
be brought out and dance
to the same sad song
of the evil that men do.

It's like a thunderstorm
hidden behind your
eyes
ready to strike
and send lightning
streaking across the subconscious
like branches and roots
of a poisoned vine
strangling what gardens
of joy used to grow there
leaving only bitter thorns
and the vague idea of
a beauty that has the potential
to exist where only blackened
skies roam

Back to school tomorrow.
Back to the din of hallway talk
and chalk dust on my jeans.
Back to long walks from
parking lots to too-bright
classrooms chock-full of half-wits.
Back to the space where I contemplate
better men than I.
Back to stairwells crowded with
oblivious ****-type idiots.
Back to advisors
huffing and puffing when they hear
the phone ring.
Back-to-back weeks of solid hell.
Back to trying to fit my square brain into a round hole.
Back to gum stuck on my shoe.
Back to school.

When you told me about
how you had hit a low
and a Gorillaz song
led to you taking the
blade
to your skin
I remember hitting you
because I felt betrayed that
you were self destructing
faster than I was
and I didn't want to be left
alone
burning out in the sky,
a novel constellation
for people who always had it better
to look upon
and cheer

The thing about
prolonged loneliness
especially as a child
is that eventually you
blur
the lines of understanding
and feel as though there is
something
that is fundamentally
broken
about you and has rendered
you unlovable
so you value those around you too much
and if and when they leave
you are brought back to all the
pain and confusion that came when your
father left on valentine's day,
a month and a half into the new
millennium
and hurtled into his own future
leaving you in the
Texas dust.

We follow the current
around each rock and
up each straight.
Some break free
and are forgotten,
some break free
and are remembered,
but only those who
swam fast away.
The rest of us are waiting
for that one great leap,
up and out and over
the banks -
the leap that we know
will be our last,
but the one we know
will show the others
we got out,
tasted the air,
glubbed our last glub
and did something
unequaled.

With the strength
of the devil
he pulled his heart out
and held it up for all to see
and in his final moments
he saw in their eyes
the realization that they had
done something wrong

The stories you tell
and the stories
you live
remain endlessly
untitled
in their retellings
only to be quantified
and labeled by those
who can only read them
but never experience
how they truly went

Am I okay?
Rarely ever
Am I happy?
Almost never

All my angst and all my sadness
Never get me anywhere
So why do I feel this way?
These feelings I almost cannot bear

Life is becoming too much for me
Handling it is a chore
But I try to lock this away
Even though I’m melting at my core

So here I am, miserable
Wasting away in Hell
But I hide it all way
So no one else can tell