so it's
4:01am
and my mother just texted me
which is kind of funny
because i just wrote a couple choice poems
about how she royally
****** me over.
she said she can't sleep
that she was thinking about me
(funny, i was thinking about her)
how much she
loved me
she called me her
precious daughter
told me
that she was praying
for me
but mom...
god doesn't listen
to people who abandon their families
still,
it makes me wonder
how did you know
i
was
awake

if i sit long enough
and let my mind
unwind all the
strange
coiled
menacing things
it contains
that i so often
shove into a blender
to make them easier to swallow
it'll say
*******
and i remember them perfectly
anyway.

for
instance
right now
i can hear
mom stuffing black
plastic-smelling
garbage bags
with clothes
in the hall
i can see the strip of light under my door
that bled through
at 3am
why
was it on
i never even
wondered
ever since
i have cursed
the lethargy
of 3am
if i had gone out and checked
i could have

                                                                        stopped
                                                                                                 her

oh
god
it hurts
so profoundly
to put that into words
to translate it from feeling
oh
god
i could have
stopped her
i could have
but i didn't
what if
i had
oh
god
i can't even
bear it

and then all those dead fruitflies
scatter across my mind
blown with the breath
of the dead
i was
walking into our kitchen
on the old
weird
cracked floor
and there on the
stained
blue table
were about six cups of half drunk
juice
from the kids bedtime snack
and there
in the center
were about 500
dead
fruitflies
in a perfect
circle
what the ****
were they doing there
i'll never know
i remember
asking mom
telling her how strange it was
but she wouldn't come
look
she just laid on the couch
her arm over her eyes
lying to me
without saying
anything
always.
the next morning
they were gone
i don't know what happened
but it was
strange

then suddenly
the horrible
nauseating feeling
will come again
rush in
uninvited
like an unwanted relative
sneak in
and take over
everything
it will eat me up
out of house and home
the thought
that

i

can't

remember

if she told me

that she loved me

before i went to bed

i was 18 then

but she always said it

anyway

worst of all

i cannot remember

if i said it back...

the last thing
you ever said to your mother
wouldn't you want it to be something like that
but i guess it wasn't
i probably even thought
about normal things
before i fell asleep
to the music
of my mother
leaving
i can't stop seeing
the scene
when i close my eyes

*******

memory

sometimes i'll go way back
in the lost annals of facebook
way back to the strange days
right after mom left
and i'll look at all the posts
the few people who knew what happened
posted on her
wall
all "i love you"s
and "please call me"s

please...
trust me
you didn't actually want her to call you
panic attacks aren't fun
they aren't a joke
when you're sitting in the room
in your sisters house
that you've been thrown into
on the floor
gasping for breath
clutching at air
raggedly
you'll wish
you never talked to her
on the phone
please
don't even

and then sometimes when i'm
brave
i'll scroll
and scroll
and scroll
until i get to the days
when we were all together
and everything was
ok.
i'll read all the things i said to my mom
...isn't that funny?
i used to say things to her...
all the nonsense things
wishing her
a happy birthday
talking about
baking her cake
and it all makes me remember
that father's day
in june
right before she left
in a chinese restaurant
how awful it was
how thoughtless the gifts
that mom picked out
and it will make me think
of my older, married sister's face
when she heard
mom was gone
how she came over to our house
where me, dad,
and another older sister sat
empty vessels
filling up with pain
that we still couldn't shake
two years later
i'll remember her saying to me
that she couldn't believe mom would just leave
we'd all been together for father's day
just the week or two before
had she been planning it
even then?
yes.
she had.
she had been planning to leave us
for months
i just wonder
how she could let me love her
when she knew she was leaving
how could she do that to me
how...
how.

i have a dream
that one day i'll have one
one day i'll decide
that this world is worth it
maybe it will be revealed to me
that everything hasn't really gone to hell
maybe one day
all this poetry
will mean something
there's this ancient book
that everyone hates
and this guy named jesus
who reassures us
like dr. king
that we will have trouble in this world
but not to give up
kick the bucket
run off
slice our wrists
because he overcame it
i miss that
radical freedom fighter
bleeding on a torture device
i'm sick and tired of his people
like i'm tired of justin beiber's fans
which is really saying a lot
if you think about it
i have a dream
that someday
i won't be so worthless
i have a dream
that someday
i'll get out of this family mess
i have a dream
that someday
i'll be allowed to dream
again

cuddling with our two
fluffy
crazy
weird-*** kittens
watching the walking dead
because it's better than reality
contemplating our juvenile cooking abilities
the prospect of dinner
a grim one
outside is grey
but yknow
it's alright.
we're
together.

today is not a day
to be alone.
when dad comes home i
run down the stairs
seek comfort in his arms
the two amigos,
standing through constant **** since 2011.
yeah, i'm almost 20
as i so frequently reiterate
mostly because i feel like a failure of a human being
but hey
i'm almost twenty...
and even though i'm near the end of my childhood
forever
my dad's deep
warm
strong comfort
after having a nightmare
cannot be compared
to anything.

we talked about mom today
remembered
old feelings
wished
prayed
for something to change
even after all this time
we haven't given up hope;
especially dad.
we dream about owning that piece of property
up on the hill
with the pond
and all the acres of farmland
the kids would love
to run through
where the dead part of my writing
that was lost with my childhood home
could be revived...

today i just want to
soak up the one
last
small piece of family
i have....

my dad.

one year
eight months
four days
or
eighty-seven weeks
and six days
which all amounts to
six hundred and fifteen days
since you left.

fourteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty hours
you have been on your own

eight hundred eighty-five thousand and six hundred minutes
you have been without your strange, silly
redheaded daughter

fifty-three million, one hundred and thirty-six thousand seconds
that you have robbed your family
of happiness
millions of breaths
that didn't belong to you

i can't figure out
if i should still be so unhappy
after all that time
you'd think a person would get better
do people with divorced parents
stay unhappy
forever?

it makes me
afraid of humanity
if my own mother
can leave me
who else will?

but most of all
if i ever am lucky enough
to have a family
i know that i will never
ever
ever
leave
i will always
try to work it out
it's always
worth it.
i am worth it
i deserve to be happy
at least once in a while

i need to stop counting the days
but i can't.

i should really try to eat something
but dad is gone for the day
and when that happens
i lose myself
all over again

it's always nice
to start your tuesday morning off
with a panic attack
from a stale memory
that slips through your dreams
often unnoticed
but not today.

the most frightened i have ever been in my life
was not that one time i was almost kidnapped in africa
(it really did happen, i'm not making **** up),
it was when we drove in the driveway
and you weren't there,
mom.
the most frightened i have ever been
ever
was when i came home
to no one
on june 22nd
2011.

skip ahead six days
(not even a week, thanks for ******* waiting)
and i wake up
to a sheriff in my kitchen
slapping my father
with an order of protection

fast forward
ten minutes
ten garbage-bagged
dusty
boxing
stuffing
dragging minutes
and we're gone.
that big
old
falling down yellow house
that i spent my entire life in
all my things
and half my family
have been taken from me
and i never even got to say
goodbye.

next three months
i don't have a home
staying at my married sister's
who really doesn't want us there
every night
an angry, crazed phone call
i beg you to come home
to tell me where you are
to let me talk
to my four youngest siblings
who you have stolen...
i pleaded with you,
mom.
i begged you to come back to me.
but you didn't care.

sometime during that first christmas
i became a cutter
because i couldn't deal
with the panic attacks
imagining you leaving me
and never coming back
all over again.
and that christmas
wasn't christmas
it was some cheap
flimsy
knock off
that knocked me off
balance.
i almost lost it
that day.

five months later
we get
kicked out of my sister's
rent a house
in an unfamiliar town
just me and dad
now.
so suddenly dropped
in a place i knew not how to interact in
new
everything.
let's just add
another complex
how about some
displacement
for the mix?

court dates
a hideous lawyer
her name fitting her job description
sue
i can still see her face
more monster than human
laughing with my mom
when we
lost.

that day
in court
you broke me.
that was it.
when i talked
of the goodness of my family,
my father,
me
you lied.
right to my face,
mom.
and i
hate you
for
it.

even now
two years later
i cannot bear it when you hug me
i'm a fake
through and through
you should see my face
when you kiss my cheek,
mom.
i can't stop it
me
from hating you
from hating what you did
to Elayna, John, Miriam
and little Jesse
who was only five
and will not remember
ever having his dad
or
me.

mom,
i wish you knew
how this feels
you wouldn't be able to stand it
because you're weak
and manipulative
and a liar
the only reason i'm still here
is because i cannot break
those four children's hearts
all over again
they've been
through enough...
but it's days like these
i wish i had no ties
i wish i could get away from the lies
i wish i could finally be at peace
i wish i could

die

i'm losing touch
someone reel me back in
i can't feel
the bottom anymore
i went too far
pull me back
please
i don't want another scar
with your name on it

trip
drip
crash
the hours slam by
dear
you're supposed to be writing an essay
stop telling it to *******
you're never going to be anything
ever
you're not a poet
you're some dumb kid with a pen
trip
drip
crash
you're going to be out on your ***
if you don't stop
mooning around
trip
drip
SLAM
i wonder how much it'd hurt dad
if i opened that door
started walking
and never came back
maybe he'd only feel it
for a little while
i wish i wasn't always so
guilty
about everything
trip
drip
fall
dad i wish i could tell you
i don't want to be here
at all
i wish you couldn't see me
leave
does it count as running away
if you're almost
twenty?
back
forth
the hours sweep
and recede
dad i think i miss mom
i miss our big yellow house
i hate living here
let's leave.
skip
jump
flee
where will i be
in ten years
no
five months...
tomorrow
five minutes?
trip
drip
fly
i don't even have
tears
to
cry

sometimes i think about
how it would be
to be
in someone's arms
whenever i felt like it
like a kind of
lilting tune
that beckons, draws in
draws out
complications
i don't want love
and all that comes zig-zagging after it
i just want to be held.
maybe my mom didn't hold me enough as a child
i mean
she had a lot of kids to hold
i guess
maybe the funny, quirky redheaded one
didn't get a chance
maybe i'm one of those people
who will grow up deranged
because my parents let me cry at night
instead of rocking me
holding me
comforting me
i learned to
rock myself
back and forth
my arms holding
my knees
comforting
the empty valley
in my chest
badly
because i never
learned
how.