like a popular song once said

She couldn't remember a time
when she felt needed

So she wrapped the
blanket around
her and cried while biting her
lips

oh, but it wasn't entirely
correct. In the other room
the old man kept
shouting her name
and knocking on the wall
He'd soiled his
underwear
again and needed help changing

She was very
needed now. She'd been needed ever
since mother left
for the last time and father followed
her
drunk as he was
and rolled the car down the hill. He wanted
to hit mother and her
new man with the car
and missed
And now his legs wouldn't work anymore
and his imbecile daughter
didn't take care of him
the right way

"The right way..." she said. "Is to
let you rot. Let your
body match your soul, old man..."
She placed the
pillow over her head
and closed her eyes
and remembered
the song

If love was red
then she was...

Step 1: Get out of bed
Step 2: Look in the mirror
Step 3: Practice your smile
Step 4: Eyedrops to hide the red eyes
Step 5: Conceal the dark circles
Step 6: Breathe
The curtains are almost up
Step 7: Lock down the pain
Step 8: Ignore the weight on your chest
Step 9: Silence the screams inside of your mind
Step 10: Choke down the sobs
Step 11: Ignore the stinging in your eyes
Step 12: Swallow past the tightness in your throat
You’ve put on this show a million times
Step 13: Don’t let them see
Times up. Curtains up. Camera rolling

she woke me
too soon

I am not ready
I do not

understand
what is

happening

the world
is different

and I don’t
fit into

my roles

the structure
is changing

and I don’t
know if I

belong or
if I have

a choice

i want to be so lovely
tear the skin from my bones and whittle me down to nothing,
there-
am i small enough for you?
i want to be so tiny,
tear these limbs to pieces and press them,
dry me out like a bouquet and let my petals fall,
hang me decoratively throughout the apartment,
brittle and thin and lifeless and lovely

that love seems like
a blessing and then we go
can curse the day we were
born? We didn’t live too long

in the happily ever after. It made
an appearance but was over before the
first Act. I look back and wonder how
we even got started. You were handsome

and you thought I could glue back
all your broken parts. But all I did was
Wreck you bed. And all you did was
Mess my head. And now your dead. And I

Steal my liquor. But I could never steal
your heart. I wrote about it. Sold it
in books. But my life is torn apart from
the anguish. I feel the pain every day. Why

Did you have to up and die? Leaving me
with all these questions –
Why?

alone, at midnight,
a glutton, i writhe with shame —
mac ‘n’ cheese my bane.