i have broken too many bones
to keep bending over backwards
to try to prove to you that
i'm exactly what you need

how can i support you
when i no longer have a backbone
to support myself?

I watch my amazing
wonderful
thoughtful
funny
boy.

He doesn't belong.

He is merely tolerated
by people he thinks
are his friends.

But I watch.
And I know.

He has no confidant.
He is no one's go-to guy.
He is alone.

I understand his situation.
I lived it.

And it was everything I didn't want for him.

The Loneliness.
The Isolation.
The Wondering...

Why is who I am not good enough?
Why do people not understand me?
Who do I have?

So I say to my son...
you have me.
Always me.

I will accept you
and acknowledge you
and love you.

I will remind you why
you are the best thing that
has ever happened to me.
That you changed my life.
That you are my reason for being.

That people don't understand the depth of your soul.
Your compassion.
Your understanding of humanity.
Already at age 14.

And that someday
people will regret
not knowing you
and accepting you
and loving you
while you move on to people who do.

Until then,
you always have me, son.
Always.

I wrote a note to the devil,
and told him to desist,
Tempting me with cake, and candy,
and all those other sweets.

You see my waist is growing,
and I can not wear my clothes.
This causes quite an uproar,
when I go to the store.

I simply will not buy new clothes,
until my waist I've found.
I know it's in there somewhere,
under all these pounds.

So everyone please take care,
cause the devil, he don't fight fair.
He lives in Walmart down isle three,
next to the rockey road icecream.

I remember
The first time
I learned to lie
"It doesn't hurt" I cried
As tears spilled from my defiant eyes
And the beatings continued,
I remember
The first time
I learned to play
Make believe,
"I have plenty of friends"
I answered to anyone who'd inquire,
And now I'm a chronic liar
Are you ok?
Yes I'm fine,
Are you sad?
No, I'm pretty happy,
How's life?
Just peachy thank you,
Just trying
To get through the day
Pretending to be glad
Rushing out the door
Knowing no one
Waits for me
At the place I call home
Looking for my knife
I recede from the outside lies
I cut deep,
And as I watch the blood seep;
Through the fabric of my parting skin
I relish the pain, the rush and the thrill of this sin
The only truth I know;
Before I cry myself to sleep...
APAD13 - 099 © okpoet

I am the shadow on the moon at night. I am the lonely wolf howling, that makes your skin crawl and your mouth go dry. I am the hooting owl, I am the black cat. I am the fog, rolling in from the river, that covers your path. I am the wind that whistles around your window pane. I am the tap, tap, tapping that drives your mind insane. I am the monster in your closet, I am the darkness in the corner. I am the witches cackle, I am the soulful mourner, weeping in the night. I am the hair on your neck when a ghost walks by. I am the scarecrow  in the field, among the corn rolls neatly tilled. I am the spider that crawls over your hand. I am the silence that rolls over the land. I am the breath you hold, when you look under your bed. I am the blanket you pull over your head. I am the fears, never said, when you crawl in your bed. I am the dead, laying in their graves, with something left to say. I am your imagination, and I've come to carry you away.

*******.

I was a bruised orange,
That round piece of fruit that had been dropped, over and over again.  
Dropped so many times, my insides had turned to sour mash.
(It was a distasteful sort of mush.)
I hid my mushiness behind an exterior of bright orange skin.

(I thought I had fooled everyone but myself.)

He swept into my life, in backward fashion,
Giving himself away to erase the disasters of my wounds.

He was eraser crumbs.
His history, one of being casually swept from the page
As others made their revisions.

Had he not been there?  
Life would have dug a hole through my crepe paper heart,
Scraping and scratching
With its hard, unforgiving end.

But he was eraser crumbs;
He slid easily across my page.

i don’t know if you were in second
or third grade. or what your favorite color was.
i’m not sure if you liked playing dress up or soccer
or if you were an only child or the baby of six.
i don’t who you had a crush on and i’m not even sure of your gender
but what i do know, is that today you were scared because you saw white
and then heard the noise of the explosion, and the screams of the injured
but i’m not sure if had learned yet in school that light travels faster than sound.
i don’t know why you were watching the marathon, but i know that you were excited
and impressed
that all these people were running for twenty-six miles, which happens
to be the distance from your house to your
grandma’s.
i don’t know if you died squeezing tightly to your mother’s hand or
if your last breath was taken alone, while hundreds ran in a flurry around you.
i do know that when you fell to the ground, no longer breathing,
you tripped a wire that pulled out
your father’s heart and sanity.
i know that you hadn’t yet felt someone
trace their lips up the divot of your spine
and i know that you will never get to sneak out of the house at
three am to get drunk in a park.
you will never see the next president or even what your best friend will wear
on his wedding day.
and i am sorry.
i am sorry that someone was sick enough to put
an explosive in the trashcan and let it detonate
i’m sorry that your death was the product of human selfishness and greed.
i am sorry that today you had to feel a warm liquid leak from your body
and that you lost so much of it you
couldn’t bear to keep your eyes open.
i’m sorry that you were eight years old when you died,
and that you barely got a taste of the world before it was snatched out from under you.