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George Anthony Aug 2016
i'm not sure that i want to live anymore
i'm not sure that i'd call it suicidal
i'm not sure that i wouldn't call it suicidal
i'm not sure if it's fair to say i'm a risk to myself
i'm not sure i'd ever go through with it
i'm not sure it's fair to ignore it
i'm not sure that i want it acknowledged
i'm not sure about showing weakness
i'm not sure about showing vulnerability
i'm not sure i want to let anybody close
i'm not sure i don't want to let anybody close
i'm not sure i can handle somebody knowing my soft side
i'm not sure i can handle somebody accepting me
i'm not sure about anything
i'm not even sure what this is

it's not a poem, really
it's not a statement
i'm not sure it's anything at all

it just is
George Anthony Aug 2016
my mother calls it being rude,
tends to yell at me for it
as if deluding herself into believing
that i won't yell back. i'm not a *****;
i won't take it
lying down.
i might be her son, but
being the teenager doesn't make me wrong,
and her being the adult doesn't make her right.
she doesn't get that,
doesn't see my side.

my friends call it sassy,
and encourage it,
and laugh, and it's nice
to just snark with them, back and forth
like a steady stream of sarcasm,
cutting quips from sharp tongues,
scathing remarks. it's all
playful, in the end,
like children who squabble over toys
then hug after mere minutes of cool down.

my mother used to call me "mouthpiece"
as a kid. it's funny how
she takes me so seriously when i'm only joking,
then laughs and degrades me
whenever i take something personally,
as if the verbal abuse slipping from her lips
is nothing more than teasing.
she's a hypocrite.
she calls me rude, an "ungrateful little ****",
wishes hell upon me, slaps me round the head
and gets in my face like a threat,
teeth bared like blades

but mother, i'm not scared of bleeding―
got that beaten out of me
so very long ago.
if you could just stop now, shut up,
quit being a mouthpiece, as you call it,
then this will all blow over,
and we can go back to pretending
that each of us doesn't exist to the other
for a couple nights.
we're sort of volatile, you and i
sometimes your words hurt more
than daddy's gripping hands or neglect ever could.

sometimes you make alcoholism tempting,
and wouldn't that be a fine symphony,
"like father, like son"
ringing hollowly in the empty space
between my ribs and my lungs
forgetting how to breathe
without breathing too much.
somebody once called my panic attacks
"attention seeking", but they were so wrong.
i've never wanted to be more invisible
than when i've found myself vulnerable
over a ******* memory, a ******* ghost of all the--

do you know how strange it is
to feel your heart hammering against your bones
with the too-fast flow of blood making your head spin,
when you've been so certain
that you've never had a heart at all?

this heart never got broken, depressingly enough.
it's kind of tragic to want something to hurt bad enough
to make you feel normal, human
but i've kind of been conditioned for disappointment
and solitude, and anger.
i've been so fine-tuned to drum beats
and cold voices,
it's no wonder i'm so closed off and detached.
but hey, at least it saved me some trauma,
no betrayals here, no questions,
no "i thought you loved me". hell,
i'm not even bitter that i never got a chance at a proper family

does that make me lucky?

ah, such a mouthpiece,
always spitting venom, dark humour at my own expense,
warding off any meaningful company
laughing about those times i tried to **** myself
like they're nothing

did you expect any less? how could you expect more?
your worthless son
is as cold and dead on the inside as his daddy.

that bitter symphony,
"like father, like son".
  Aug 2016 George Anthony
Micah
gender identity can be
    one of the hardest things to fight
        because the only thing you can do
           is lean on what you think
               and hope that it's right
George Anthony Aug 2016
after some time
and some distance
it's safe to say that
i love you
like a best friend,
and i can't describe
the relief that brings me.

my heartbeat
doesn't feel so painful,
not anymore,
and i breathe
so much easier
now that i know
i'll never have to write
another heartbroken word about you
ever again.

god, i love you still,
i really, really do;
but it's so much easier now,
not struggling to swim
through raging waves
under the weight of
expectations and assumptions,
hesitation and guilt

it's so much easier
to be in love with you
with almost none of the romance
that went with it before,
and i really hope that
you're okay with that,
because you promised me:

"you're enough", you said.
and it took every ounce of courage
dredged up
from the marrow of these aching bones
to trust you,
to believe you,
to dare to allow that someone―
that you―
could love me
unconditionally.
George Anthony Aug 2016
dusk settles over the hilltops
and you find me
back resting against a tree trunk
wondering
"whose spine is sturdier?"
raising a cancer stick to my lips,
refusing to inhale after ******* in the smoke,
and i think
"coward"
and i know that i will never
be rooted;
i will never
stay loyal to one patch of earth
unlike this oak that supports me

holding the smog
between my lips
is a little more dangerous
than Augustus' metaphor
but it's sure as hell
less dangerous
than letting it clog my lungs―unless
storing it for a moment before exhaling
is likely to give me mouth cancer
instead of lung cancer

well, i've never been one for commitment
i think i'd rather spit
and pretend
that the tumour
is being expelled
than know there's something
deep inside
that grows every time i so much as breathe

oh, love,
what an illness you are
both of you:
the feeling, and the holder of that pet-name
no chemotherapy
is going to save me,
not now

i think i'll hand myself over
to ignorance
and wait for the problem
to go away

my immune system has always been impressive
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