It is one thing to be haunted by past loves and loss
But it is another to be haunted by the person you have made me

I am forced to live with the girl who is terrified of being.
We all have our demons. We always will.
Mine are no bigger than yours, yet the fact remains
That we are all equally as frightened of dealing with them.
Many days I spend in complete and utter solitude,
Trying my best to be proud of myself or give any
Credit to my name for any good or purposeful thing I have done.
I'm terrible with compliments. Not in the cute, girly way
Where you smile and giggle and say "thanks" and blush
Nah, I literally feel like crying.
I'm messed up.
I lived with someone who accidentally showed me
What it means to be inherently selfish
What it means to be downright nasty and steely cold towards
People that they were supposed to care for.
And it has wrecked me. I lost my sense of identity.
I was so busy walking on eggshells and quieting
My own rights, feelings, and thoughts,
That I started not to have any.
I was kind of brutal. Pushed every single friend away.
Pushed family away. Bombed school.
The human psyche is such an expansive tool.
If we spend our time treating others wrongly,
It messes up the one chance we have at living.
I forgot how to live.
I wasn't taught how to live.
I lost myself.
I always used to imagine this white electric string
Like some new-agey stuff
It was connected to all people for before time and after.
If you're gonna be born next year, the rope has a place for you
Picked out, shiny, bright, ready to showcase you to the world
And if you are miscarried, the rope keeps swinging
On to the next person.
The next birth.
I imagined all of our consciousness' were tied to that string.
That is how we can think the same thoughts and speak languages
How we have souls, maybe the string is the soul
If it always existed then it can always exist
This was my logic
And I got so lost and away from myself
That I imagined I was cut off from the rope
It was the only time I went through with trying
To take my own life.
I thought it was a cruel joke that I could still think about it while
Being so disconnected from it.
I felt abandoned and shunned.
I felt like I could never return.
My panic attacks became violent and life threatening.
Nobody knows, I never told anyone.
When I tried to ask for help for my panic
From my mother
She dismissed me.
Irony would have it that she was also the one
To disconnect me from myself.
So over the years I have fought to rejoin the string
I am back with you people
I am alive again and I expect to stay.
When my time on the rope expires,
It will not be of my own hand.
Because my mother gave me one gift
Accidentally, of course
My mother taught me never to let
Someone else dictate my place
On the String of Consciousness.

20,000 years
that is all I want with you
time is ours to steal

I study her withering hands every time I'm around her
they are becoming so thin... all her veins stick out like snakes
her fingers are all crooked--
broken tree branches fighting against the wind
eighty years of working her flower beds and scrubbing floors and
baking the best meals and desserts that only a grandmother can prepare
and my grandpa, I have never loved a person as deep and as securely as I love him  
saying you have a hero borders on icon-worshipping but in this case he's solid
he is the absolute best and absolute most loyal man I have ever had the pleasure
of knowing
he married my grandma at eighteen, and
eighty eight years of wars and he never took one sick day off of work
he sleds down his long, winding driveway to pick up his mail in the snow
he used to pour water in my hands and tell me that if I could catch it,
I could catch the entire universe right there in my palms
I tried for years

I study their hands because I want to remember their greatest parts
arguably, that could be every inch, but their hands have shown
such strength, boldness, fight, hard work, dedication, love, and tenderness
maybe this is wrong but every day I practice saying goodbye in my mind
so that when they pass, I am not so crushed that I cannot move on
they have been my saving grace too many times for me to thank them for
so I just say I love you, you're my reason for existing, and then I
carefully etch their hands in my mind so that never for a second
will I forget the great work they have done here

old friend, what a surprise
past the devil's hour with open eyes
now my mind is surging with all the
thoughts and self I blocked out after sunrise

patterns reflect patterns reflect history repeating itself
I see problems in humanity because humanity corrupts
seriously, we can't have a movement for "better" without making it worse
listen, slavery, right?
whites hated blacks
deemed them lesser
deemed them nobodies, nonexistent
that's putting it generic
so what do we have now?
an era of white-haters!
so many "minorities" standing up and saying
"I hate the whites"
we have done a 360 and it kills me
it was supposed to be about blacks being seen as equals
being seen as people instead of blacks
and now, yeah, I'm going there
gays
I love gays, man
but y'all are killing me too
this is what I see
gays oppressed, dismissed, told they're sinners
unholy, bad, gross, wrong, backwards, ugh
they were beaten, bloodied, bruised, murdered, silenced
so the gays stand up
what do I hear?
"I hate Christians"
"I hate straights"
"I hate everyone who is not gay"
people hating on macklemore because
he tried to stand up
for THE PEOPLE!
they say
"a straight white man cannot represent the gay community"
I'm sorry

WHAT????

we act like no one has gone through HARDSHIP
we act like if you're white, straight, and a male, you're golden
free
happy
perfect
wake up.
what no  one discusses
is that the issue is right vs wrong
right vs wrong
right vs wrong
I'm not a straight white male but I know right vs wrong
I'm not an Irish Jew but I know right vs wrong
I'm not a Haitian Creole Indian goddess but I know right vs wrong
you don't have to BE the oppression to SPEAK on the oppression
you have to know right vs wrong
I say macklemore knows
I know
you know
let's speak up
what is wrong is discrimination
what is right is taking a stand to end it
so please
blacks,
gays,
minorities,
whites,
humans,
majorities,
stop obliterating good
or else you'll be confined to the chains of oppression and silence until the day you die and so on amen

I'm a human being
tell me what I cannot speak on