My grandmother always told me,
that one day I would build my family.
Build my family?
Like chopped pieces of wood sanded and nailed
one atop another
shaped as I want them.
Build a family
not much like the one I have now
Where misconceptions and judgments etch our foundation.
Where one black sheep spawns another.
Where there are so many pieces and segments
of rotting wood.
My father was a **** addict
My mother jumped the same ship.
My brother I have only seen twice in my lifetime since the age of four.
One grandmother is passed, leaving nothing but the smell of wine
and the vision of cigarette smoke next to her oxygen tank.
One grandmother a Mormon, who turned a blind eye
As one grandfather scraped innocence from the inside of my ribcage, leaving me hollow.
One aunt, with her perfect little life, and the power to make mine feel so insignificant.
One uncle who pretends to take me as I am,
While I follow the path he envisions for me
One grandfather who I am sure loved me,
with one grandmother who sacrificed her retirement age to raise me.
All families have their issues, this is what we all say.
But when I came to you,
bony elbowed twelve year old girl
hair atop my head disintegrating from three dollar bleach dye,
every one of you could see the broken I wore
in the forefront of my chest.
I radiated hunger harder and faster the sun,
I consumed all of the life saving aids you provided.
I never learned quite how to say thank you for that
Me being there, I was insatiable.
I begged you not feed me in grocery bought items,
I learned a long time ago how not to need those things
I begged you not to shower me in cotton constraints,
because i learned a long time ago,
how to wear one shirt and one pair of jeans at all times.
I begged you not to push school,
because I once had to learn how to push myself.
I begged you not to rule with an iron fist,
My childhood taught me
that ruling myself was the only way I was going to get anywhere.
See I was not asking for any of these things,
these things I am told to be grateful for.
I starved for your affection,
for I love you's.
For that fabled existence of a family that would love me.
I met your stone cold authority with violent rebellion.
Do not tell me to grow up,
because I learned along time ago
that childhood is only a myth.
Closest to the best bed time story
where children attend one single school for five years.
Where play toys and best friends exist,
but only in these stories.
I came to you hollow,
begging you to flow into me,
and fill me with that grandmother love,
love I watched you hand out like candy to the other children in our family.
But it's always different when you live with them.
I know that you never watched me when I was little,
I know that you knew me,
for a few hours
before I got here.
I know that my father must've really broken your heart.
But I did not do these things.
I did not carve my past or choose this heartbreak
I would never have wished that upon you.
All I wanted was to feel summer sunshine love,
warm my chilled bones,
I wanted hugs and kisses and things that made us a beautiful,
broken, little family.
I may not have seen this in the things you sacrificed for me,
and I may still have trouble calling that the type of love I was looking for.
I am ever so grateful,
that you gave me the tools to learn what normal life is.
I am ever so grateful,
that with out you
I would be some cracked out nineteen year old
lining the las vegas strip
with a show of legs and kisses.
But I cannot pretend,
that sometimes I don't cry to the rising of the moon,
for the love I wanted too badly.
I carved deeper into my scraped out rib cage
trying to find something in me of worth.
I cannot lie and tell you that I have learned how even to love myself,
because I haven't.
My grandmother always told me,
that one day I would build my family.
I may not have gotten that far yet,
to have wooden carved children and a perfectly sculpted husband.
But I am gathering a family of love like I wanted.
They surround me with soft and eager hands,
they dig deeper into my bones,
and show me where the value sleeps.
I do not have a sister,
But I have a Jessica, with paint fingers that outline my contours,
Showing me the lines built to keep me in,
and to keep me from overflowing on rainy days.
I do not have a husband,
But I have a Spencer, with a gleaming iron exterior,
blocking the dark angry pain with in me,
soothing the insecurities and quelling my storm.
I do not have a daughter,
but I have a Suzanne, with wings so glorious,
she towers over my hunger,
making it feel so small.
And I may not have a son,
But I have a Jacob, with humor so gallant,
there is no sadness to conquer my laughter.
And I may not be sanding down the rough edges we all carry,
because I like it better this way.
A family built from love,
love radiating so bright,
we make the eyes of the world see nothing
but the light on our shoulders.

These days I hate being told about my strength.
I hate being handed a title branding my chest
With a word so full of magnitude.
I am discovering not that this world has taught me strength,
But that it has carved creeking creavices of weakness.
Straight to the base of my bones.
If I should ever walk past,
You are more likely to hear my
Fault lines shaking earthquakes
Through every fiber of my woven body.
Lately I have no peace of mind to find some sleep.
I"ve been scraping the avenues we paved together
Knees broken, ****** hands,
Praying to find a piece of you.
My eyelids refuse to give me darkness
With such a measured distance between us.
Knowing that you will not be there,
Playing symphonies through my ribs as I wake,
Is too much a burden for my tired heart.
Can you tell me, where is the strength in this?
I can no longer look at my mother
Without some shame swelling
A fierce sea inside of me.
Waves of my mother's failure pummel my gut.
Yet I could never tell her this.
Could never say that she
Ruined my life,
Put me through hell.
Fed my childhood to the mouth
Of the monster of addiction.
Knowing my innocence was spilled as blood,
A sacrifice to the God of her fix.
Ten years later,
I still cannot look at my mother.
Now tell me, what is the strength in this?
Loving me is a death wish.
For I will drain the life from you.
Facing such a world with these hollowed out eyes,
I cannot do so on my own.
Make sure to keep you distance,
Too close and I will bind our wrists
With rope a burning indian.
So when the knife comes down,
I will not bleed alone.
So tell me, what is the strength in this?
One year since flashbacks of things,
I never knew I remembered.
When the darkness comes I
Cannot close my eyes without
First feeling his hands,
His eyes,
His breath.
I cannot love myself,
For disgrace of the woman he sculpted out of me.
So show me where is the strength?
I hate being told abbout my strength.
I hate being handed a title
Branding my chest with burnt crooked lies
I hate being granted a word so full of magnitude.
My shoulders weren't crafted
To hold such weight.
You may never find that in me.
So if you call this strength,
Here take a look
At my book of weaknesses.
How much strength do you see in me now?

So i have this some kind of past..
I spend most days crawling away from.
Most days, shoving the sound back
Down below my rusting throat,
Past my blackened lungs,
Behind my rotting ribcage.
Here lies its den.
Back into the deepest reaches of a
Cavern somewhere below my belly button.
Here lies its den.
Here resides the demon.
Born of dark corners asleep on the floor,
**** mouthed mothers, fathers,
Shaking words through their jagged teeth,
A mile a minute,
Too much speed for this babygirl mind.
Born of dark couches
The only light some type of grey-cloud
Frenzy on playback from the television.
And some girl is crying for mommy to come home.
Some days this little girl face is so distorted,
I forget that little girl is me.
Born of dark streets with concrete arms
To hold me.
As I am sending my tuck me in prayers
To the God who has let me become this...
Homeless.
And I am hiding all of this
Behind rotting ribcages
A darkness, chiseling its way out
I can't I won't
I can't can't let them see.
Every new face I am pushing this down
Farther
Harder
And it is SCREAMING louder.
Please!
SHUT THE **** UP.
.. I cannot let you out.
Here lies its den.
Some days it swells so swift
I feel it brimming at the specks of my eyes,
Pushing black ink from my pupils,
And I fear they might see it, pulsing.
This ugliness born of dark bedrooms,
Where the only sound, an opening door,
A sliding lock
faster than the closest gunshot,
It scrapes up your cowering spine.
Never have the hands of a sixty-year old man
Left so many fingered scars across my
Six year old body.
Some days this face seems so distorted
And then I remember
Some foreign, horrid tasting word,
Leaving desert sandstorms in my mouth..
Grandfather.
Here lies its den.
Heavy is the thick of its mane
Rought with iron roots,
Haunting with eyes of mercury,
Spurring an oncoming
Hurricane season,
I shall be torn from the inside out,
The darkness seeping out thicker
Than the rush of blood.
Exposed to the ***** eyes like ***** hands,
Stained by the unclean places we have become.
Disintegrating more tragedy than
The carved stone walls of Greece itself.
Give me sanctuary,
Yet when Evil holds its nest from within you,
No pearly white gates
Bask open arms
To hold you.
So here I've got sin,
Or sin's got me,
Planting seeds behind my rotting ribcage
From even the first of days I can remember.
So here I stand
With this some kind of past
Bursting from me,
From my torn apart seems.
And Now,
Now the ugly eyes of the world have seen..
Here lies its den.

We've got jello legs
My puddin' darling.
There is a sort of silent sharpness
growing out of the glowing
of your skin.
although the breathing wall
from behind your neck
calls to my eyes,
beckoning with an inexplicable, silly smirk
your flesh wins me over with
its brilliant colored heat
white hot heat.
I've caught the fixation
haunting my brain
with the crashing in your eyes
my lashes float down to rest
upon my hill cheeks
a darkness drops
the end scene curtain
and you are dancing 'round me
time speeds as i spin
your voice dances from side to side
a faint touch here
a streak of light then
now i have stopped
and before me you stand, knowing
maybe you had never really moved at all
outside
an emptiness fills the space
the crunch of the rocks, fire crackers
in my drums
i make the black tar
a bed for these moments
to lie upon
the thrumming sky pushes in upon
my pupils
sinking lower and lower
to swallow me
as i push up to stand
the sky retreats
to float lightly atop my head
inconspicuous enough to weigh
me down
yet loomingly enough to be known
a guardian of some sort
floating me on to you
to the laughter billowing up
from the depths of your lungs

Remember the innocence in the way we once fell upon the playground?
Scraped knees and ****** hands,
we held starlight in the center of our palms.
Somewhere along the way our bodies
grew long and lanky, we fall too awkward.
We have turned this graceful display of youth
into a grotesque scene of blood splatter.
We do not tumble with out damage,
the kind that scars your bones, reaches to the very core of you.
I wonder often, if we may ever get back to the simple things,
things like hot summer cement,
things like melting ice cream,
and beating the height of the sun on swing sets?
I wonder if there is a dream wave to ride back to childhood
To school girl crushes
and crayons that taste like the best candy I have ever consumed.
Some days I wish that I could verbalize this feeling,
to the people that I love.
When I watch them fall from skyscrapers
I want to meet them at the ground
with a dream catcher to save them.
And when I caught them, I would whisper slowly
of the days when we used to believe in these things.
When we would make birthday wishes about being able to fly,
and we did not have such heavy bricks holding down our imaginations.
I want to take them by the hand, to this place in my heart
Deep down, past all of the crushing things,
Where the moon leaks moonshine
and we drink until our baby bellies are full.
Where the grass tastes like laffy taffy
and the sun's rays caress your back as I once believed it did.
I want to show them this place inside of me,
and make them understand that it belongs inside of them too.
Cotton Candy vendors on the street
Happy thoughts, and graceful falls.
Some where inside us.