After the screams
I was coming undone,
splitting at the seams.
I hauled all my watercolors
out of my brother's office.
I took the paintbrushes
and palettes of a thousand hues
lodged between his camo army vest
and his heavy shoes
and I sprawled out in the
spinach-green living room.
I painted
willow trees and silhouettes
and viridian snakes spilling from ***** lips.

At 2am I got up
headed to the deck
and watched the stars
Because sometimes I forget.
I let my nights
be slaughtered by sobs.

These nights, this view
It’s mine, you can’t have it.
Everyone needs a place
and this is mine,
this tiny nirvana,
2 o'clock constellations
in the dark purple bruise of night
are my home.

A pool of watercolors,
magenta, cyan, indigo, emerald and cerulean,
swells in my chest,
in the empty space between my lungs.
A drowning, a baptism.

Everywhere, in everything,
your unblinking ghost.
It refuses to dissolve.

Four years ago I started dying,
not of terminal illness nor poetic expression
about how we were all born to slowly die,
I died the first day of his last six months
and I died every single day for the next ten

This is four years later and Dad comes home
at 11:50 saying “She’s going to go tonight”
and I don’t cry
but I calmly allow myself to die a little more
and I glance at his own oxygen tank

At 11:55 we pull up to the home
and it is exactly what I expected:
oxygen masks and morphine
clinical and impersonal
next to her pale, familiar frame

And I kiss her softly and tell her I’m here
and she tries to open her eyes

This makes everyone exceedingly happy

The nurse shuffles in with explanations, condolences,
Make her comfortable's, There's nothing you can do's,
expecting heartbroken surprise
but the words are less than foreign
to this family they are home enough
familiar as an old dog’s bark
       all we can do is to hold her hand



Eventually we say our goodbyes
and I walk away waiting to feel eighteen
waiting to feel alive

there exists a girl
who is different
people whisper about her
and snicker amongst themselves
"something is wrong with her," they say
"she's crazy"
"she can't be normal"
"she ISNT normal"
so they try forcing her to be
they put her on medication
they put her in hospitals
they look down at her with false smiles
they pretend to be concerned
but she knows the truth
they
do
not
care
and they never will
but even through it all
the girl is happy
because she doesn't care if she is normal
she is different
she is unique
she is special
not everyone likes her
or the things she does
or the things she says
but the people who do,
they love her
and she holds on to that
and she grows stronger
and she found hope
and she is happy


*~kns