Lately everything I've been doing has been done sober
My home has been spilling it's contents on the front porch steps; ripping flesh and cigarette burns off the carpet
The rooms gutted of their secrets, the walls even started whispering again
This is not dying, they say.
This household with it's backlash repression and traumatic events
bigger than the holes in my hands, but tonight I cannot play god
But that's all this is, isn't it?
emergency room contacts instead of friends
A waiting room, a fire exit, a fire hydrant parking station violation
I remember when my father would hold me in his lap, already in a drunken stupor talking about the love of his life
And I would listen, then I'd count the antidepressants for my mother
as she'd echo that love is someone holding your hair as you forget
and baby, I cannot forget.
I talk about you in past-tense and it still aches.
One time when I was a child
I was told not to run with scissors
not to play with fire
not to talk to strangers
but here we are,
I've got a fire that can demolish an entire forest
and my fingers are calloused from touching people I don't love nor know by first name
and there's this wound that doesn't heal
and I think it's you, I think it's you

(L.F)