Your smell is still on the tip of my nose
I can see it
I can feel it.
And your screams still run from ear to ear
Like when I was a child and mommy never came home.
In the night I see my blackened legs and arms
And you sitting on the ceiling
Taking my breath from above me
Holding me down with the force of a million fists
Your fists.
But now I always wake up
Instead of being trapped in the night for eternity
And I find myself so relieved to hear that
You have been gone for more than a year
But it feels like yesterday you got sent away
when I was crying in the corner you sent me to
Praying to God
Who I never believed in before
but then you were finally taken away
And now I thank God
every single day.

But I can thank you
Because if I had never met you
I would still be in that same corner
With a gun to my head
Letter on the bed
Shaking like a wet dog
And wishing I was dead.

Dear Mr. Sunshine,
“When will dad be home to sing me a lullaby again?”
Those words
are stapled to the back of my head every waking day by our daughter
whose pouty lips tremble as she kisses your picture
then slowly looks up at me,
“soon.”
What else am I to say
when I ask myself the same **** question
every day, every night
and every year.
Then the sirens sing,
and we hide under a small table
as a group of men search for explosives,
gunshots echo through the shack and numb my ears
a small girl from across the room coughs up tomato soup
and is instantly tossed out onto the cold streets
of the October blue

Dear Mr. Sunshine,
It is now the end of December
and instead of snow wrapped around our little town like a blanket
there is chilled blue flames
that leave children screaming
screaming at the fire for taking their family.

Dear Mr. Sunshine,
It has been months since you wrote back
and years since I have seen you.
Now it’s March and sky is flooded with silver waste
and as I looked up from my balcony
the door began to ring,
I ran to the door
and saw your bright blue face,
with your soft pale eyes
but your soul wasn’t you
your mind had been replaced by the war.
And as I opened my ears to speak
I saw the knife in your hands and as you whispered
“I love you”
the light that was you
went through the sharp jagged edges
and sank into my heart,
sunshine took over my lungs
and darkness sunk behind my eyes
Dear Mr. Sunshine,
where are you?

No matter how shattered our homes were
or how many times throughout the night we heard our own cries,
we all started off with a grin stretching over our faces
with wide eyes staring at the sapphire sky and the emerald trees,
curiosity always singing lullabies in our ears.
But eventually,
the sky turns to rust and the tree's leaves fall off
and we are left to wonder where we went wrong
and how we got to the edge of the world,
looking down a sempiternal pit of blank faces,
including your own.
And as we grew our hands became rougher
while others got smoother,
so with the same wide eyes
we gaze up at the people who we praised,
for climbing down the border of the earth
wondering how they fell into the world
and climbed off of it into their mind,
and it was only till now that we realized,
separate people conquer different insanities.

I awoke from the abapical dream I was stuck in day after day
no longer a colourless slaughter house that ***** itself like the alphabet.
In the aphotic corner is where I had lived but you summoned me
and like a bloodshot butterfly you fell from the cocoon that had trapped you for so long
finally free of what had held you back from breaking through before
you ran through the halls and out the door and kept running
running

Today is where I saw ***** stained children
that had dolls for mothers
dolls that spent each second of every day on every detail all to please what?
Their kids? Or that strange mans ****?
I saw mothers without fathers and fathers without mothers drowning their future children
our future intelligence
drowning them in a pile of ******* they called beautiful.
I saw the youngest of girls being ***** and beaten by the first love they ever had and will
beaten till bruises covered the pale skin that was once untouched and flawless
beaten with words that turned to red hands reaching around their necks
beaten by the eyes of strangers that would **** her more that he ever did.
And tonight is where my eyes were nailed open
because through the thin walls of my apartment I heard the carnal moans
and again every **** day till the 9th month because the **** child was born
cries all night and every following night because they won’t feed the thing
it is hungry for love
hungry for feeling
hungry for something to look at other than it’s ******* crib!
Last night is where I saw mental disorders that sunk their fingers through people's veins
schizophrenia, identity disorders, depression and anxiety
to them the world is nothing but hallucinations
death hovering over them when they wake
worms in their skin that only razors will get out
but they never knew the worms were veins.
This morning was where I walked to get coffee and witnessed 12 year olds running from a local market with ******* magazines and videos piled in their arms.
And today is where I saw girls starving themselves and spewing every drop that they consume
because the world around them screams in their ears that they are not perfect
they use techniques that are morbid but so common it’s sane
and under their bed is where the demon hides
a bucket of ***** that has sit there for days measuring tapes and diet pills
pictures of girls who are edited to perfection and the lies to their mothers who ask if they ate.
Yesterday is where the children live
crying blood and driving razors on their skin because they thought it was a good idea
because they wanted attention
because they wanted to see what it felt like to have someone care for them
because they hurt inside so bad they hide it in a box with knives and scissors and razors and safety pins.
Last night was where I saw christmas
spoiled children who get everything they asked for
new computers, new cars, new phones and money
money that goes to drugs and birth control that won’t work.
Yesterday I saw parents who worked from AM to AM again
just so they could put food on the table and pay their bills.
Then people who shot down their lovers with ice
and proceed to ask why?
why are they gone, why are they not here?

But today, today is where she saw the hospital for the first time without being admitted
today is where I screamed at the children who took everything for granted, at the parents who are blind to their children, at the world for replacing wrong with right.
And today is where I broke free and said everything I wanted to.

The sky was beautiful,
a million glimmers of light flickered while dancing with the dark sun,
time became invisible,
days, years and empty time has passed,
and I still am gazing up when the world puts on its cloak.
Mother died again so I ran to the galaxy,
it was red and sharp,
glimmering like treasure,
seducing me to take it.
Then father's cries came again,
and the moon stung my tongue,
with the bitter taste of water.
When the moon began to droop as if it were milk being poured in the soil,
I would scamper and crawl into the wound that frosted my mothers stomach,
and the night would begin to spin,
the stars sunk into my veins,
a needle,
that was rusted and long,
stitched beneath the thin walls,
larking in the torn bricks of a broken home.