I.
    i.
Someone hurt you, and I worried silently until my lip bled.
I never asked if you were okay, I never visited you to offer you comfort:
The next time I saw you, after you'd been absent for days, I smiled.

    ii.
You tripped and fell on shards of glass, and I listened with worried eyes.
You say there was lots of blood, and you and your family ended up in the emergency room at quarter past midnight, hence your half day at school.
Your arm is in a cast for a time, but I never sign it and I never make jokes:
I gave you the Spanish homework that you missed, and nothing else.


II.
You were confessing secrets in the dark, and I was listening.
You hid away your pain because there was no one there for you, not anymore, and told me because this was short, a two week summer camp during which you didn't think any friendships would form. When the sky was so dark only our shadows could be seen, you told me your wish for my face, how impossible to read it was, so adept at concealing emotions.
It was a fair trade: You taught me I had a mask, and I kept your secrets.

III.
    i.
You are rushed to the hospital, and I pretend everything is fine.
You are fine the day, the week, the year, after, so worrying is unnecessary:
I fly to see you over the summer, despite having had no intentions to do so before.

    ii.
Your face is gaunt, and you flinch at touch, and I hide my worry away.
You trust only two boys, now, and you stay away from human contact and the crowds in the hallways.
After the initial two weeks, no one talks of it, and I am not the exception:
I always ask, after. If I can initiate contact. And I ask  everyone,  not just you.

    iii.
You couldn't breathe through your panic and fear, and my hands shook.
You were so terrified of being beaten. So terrified of being kicked out of your home, for something you'd hardly had any control over.
I told you to call me, that you could stay at my place, no matter anything.
You said everything was fine, the next day. You claimed overreaction.
I secretly worried myself to tears, told you only that my offer still stood.

IV.
You are dying, and I am scared.
I was worried when you said the doctors had found a tumor, and I was worried when you told me you'd been unable to eat for days.
But I'd hoped for the best.

You were the first, you know.
I'd always just gone straight to expecting the  worse,  before.
But then bad things kept on happening, yet they weren't ever awful.
So, I thought, maybe, for once, I'd hope, and the pattern would continue.
I thought perhaps the tumor would be benign, and you'd be just  fine.

You're going to die, though.
And I'm worried about you, and I can't hide it:
I'm sorry for caring about you enough for it to be obvious.
I'm sorry you have to deal with my pain on top of your own.
And I wish *you would stay, could stay, because I'm going to miss you.

Right now,
I believe I have no name.
Right now,
I could probably write a 351 page book on how I am nothing —
on how we are all nothing —
and pass as very intelligent,
very entitled psychologist
who knows so much more than you.

I place him on the chair
Took the kitchen knife
*******, spraying in the air
I stabbed and stabbed till there was no more to be done
The doll he screamed, he screamed but could not run
I felt the pain with each piercing stab
I felt the loss, as the knife I quickly tossed

The neighbors heard such horrible noises
They called the cops, thinking oh the voices
In that crazy ones head, we should have seen
He had wild eyes and born he should not have been

The police came to see little old me
Broke the door in a rush they seemed to be
They saw the blood, they saw the horror
Yet they saw no victim, only a mirror in the corner

I was not dead
Not even close
I removed my soul and placed him on the chair there
Stabbing all night in the thin thin air
There was no crime, no serial killer
Only me
Stabbing my soul, over and over and over

Autumn comes when my sadness
Arrived like a cold blanket
Of leaves,
The fleeting sun with short days
And rainy sessions of music
Too melancholic to feel
Any ray of sunshine.....

But I like my pain,
It holds firm to memories
That tie it all together,
The glow of a quarter moon
On my drowning lips speaking
The way I used to hold you,
The way you wore me like
A robe folding every curve
Around me:
How much the depths of my soul
Want to see you in a certain
Light, passing me even as air,
Yes,
The pain with final skies
Which calls for anguish in a flowering
Darkness leaving me
Nostalgic and scattered,
Yes,
I like my pain,
That is how I know it was real.

Like so many
times before,
she went out
into the dark
and pulled it
around her--
its cloak of
          charcoal
              staining
        her fingers
as she
grasped its
deeply opaque
fabric of smoke
turning her
eyes into mirrors--
mirrors reflected
inside out, thoughts
and feelings
brash and quiet
in their subtle
points of weaving
until the cold
gleam of shards
of the onyx air
clung to her form
like an inky abyss,
the very reverse
reflection
of black snow
spilling and seeping
into her essence,
filling the weeping
in whispery presence
until all she could do
was curl into the
soft embrace
of obsidian,
surrender her soul
to the starless sky
and let
it in

Dear Mother and Father,*

        I spoke with Ali today. Maybe it was the first time in years. Maybe it was the first time that we’d ever actually spoken at all. Either way. She told me some things that I thought you should know.

Prostitutes, ******, what have you. They’re not born, they’re created.

         Focus on this. Your white picket fence. Your barbecue, your big family dog. Your pristine, rich neighborhood. Your uppity gossip. Your rules, judgements, “charity.”

         Behind your closed doors, however, dwells something else.

         Something like hypocrisy. Something like abuse.

Now focus on this.

         Ali: dark and brooding, even as a small child. Questioning all of your family values, the ones that I had merely accepted.

         My little sister, the ultimate judge, the supreme *****.

         Forbidden black fingernails, black hair; fingernails, which you forced pink, hair that you insisted blond. Friends that you deemed “greasy” and “unsavory”.

         Hateful, teenage Ali. Ditching classes to go off with boys. Returning home with track marks and glossy eyes. Sneaking out with no destination, if only to not be at the one place she couldn’t be herself.

         Home.

Now, this. That awful “it’s not to late to save your soul” camp. A reform jail. Holier than thou epithets. Squeaky clean repentance. A stockade full of higher authority telling her, “you’re wrong,” telling her, “we are going to fix you.”

         Brain washing robots with backhanded facades.

         Sad, scared Ali. It’s no wonder she chose to rebel, for all she knew of authority was hypocrisy.

         Not just you.

         Instead, a withered, sick janitor.

         The old man who brought her the food that they didn’t serve in the dinning quarters. Fresh fruit, chocolate, and cheese. Food to outweigh the everyday gruel.


         This lonely, forlorn man expecting compensation in return. ****** compensation; unimaginable and certainly ungodly acts.

         This Janitor, he would wander into Ali's room in the early hours of the morning. . . And vanish, several hours later.

        His pockets, empty. His heart, full.

         In this sick and twisted world, the janitor believed that love could exist anywhere. He believed that romantic relationships should not be constricted by something as trivial as age.

         And Ali, she had alternative motives, and compensated her innocence to reach them.

         This was, perhaps, the beginning of Ali's stark career.

         The *compensation of her soul.

         Or, perhaps, it was the man that picked her up next, as a desperate hitchhiker.

         Ali, who finagled the nun’s keys and escaped that ungodly place forever.

         Ali, who climbed into a sinister car with a pretentious man who warped her in more ways than one would even imagine.

         Penniless, solitary, and willing.

         But, think. What would you do with yourself if you had absolutely nothing and no one to lose?

         **Prostitutes, ******, what have you. They’re not born, they’re created.

lately all my illnesses have me feeling backed into corners,
i feel so trapped, weighed down by debt and regret
i have no escape; this is the way my life is doomed to play out
and oh how i wish this were all just some silly game gone too far because at least then it'd find its eventual end
but no mother is about to tell the children when enough is enough
to apologise
say "sorry"
for locking me in the closet,
for making me want to stay in bed and waste the days away,
for making me hate myself so much that i'm convinced my disorders are more sane than i am.

these children know no boundaries
and worst of all is that they're my own; i am incapable of disciplining them, of taking control—
there's a reason i never wanted kids in the first place,
their ***** little fingers plucking at my brain and soiling my house.

Depression is the oldest—i had him before i even realised he was mine
Anxiety was next, and suddenly i knew why people used the phrase "terrible two"
i found myself juggling twins without really knowing where they came from: Suicidalthoughts and Eatingdisorder
once, i nearly gave them all up
as well as hope, and dreams, and life in general—
being a single father is hard.

i managed to put one or two of them in time-out for a while but there's only so long you can leave a child alone before it becomes
abusive
i tried my best at sharing the responsibility once
let myself fall in love only to find that it's not just children that can be abused—adults can, too
when i left her, my children's behaviour became so severe i almost felt like they were the ones that were heartbroken
that girl made everything so much worse

sometimes i wonder if i'd have opted for abortion, had i known i was going to parent such savage diseases.