I listen to your problems, which touch soul to heart for years
I still wake up, hearing your laugh
Days later
Weeks later
Months Later
Seeing your smile in your eyes
Seeing your music in your words
Seeing your art through eye/s
I still draw thinking of how elegant your lips would kiss
I still listen to that elegant lofi music, thinking of how you'd cry
I listen to joji thinking about smiling, hugs, and you

You.
Smiling.

You.
Crying.

You.
Loving.



m
e

Dear dad, I love you
I love the love in your laugh
Your awesome autograph
Your perfect paraph
That chafed calf

Dear dad, I hate you
Your tactless tone
I should’ve known
That you would’ve thrown the stone
You’re like a clone
A drone
A stone

Dear dad, you’re complex
Blaming adolescent audrey
Going on a shrieking spree
Then to give me a blackberry
You’re like a broken birdie
A galaxy
My own personal genie

Dear dad, you left me
You left your baby girl
I’m not that baby girl
I’m a boy, one who has curls
Who sings in swirls

Dear dad, why her?
Why your eruptive ex?
She signs your corrosive checks
You’re just as complex

Dear dad, goodbye
I no longer believe in the high
We will never unify
You’re sly
Shy
A bad guy

You finally left our perfect family.
You packed your brown suitcase.
You said goodbye to our house of 5 years.
You drove that Cleatus down the road without looking back.
And where are you now?
With that girlfriend who lives in Minnesota.
You drove away all the way to Minnesota to go live with her.
You’re with her kids while you left your own one back here.
Why them and not me?

That’s a question I ask myself everyday.

Was it my quiet self?
Or my avoidance of the hard stuff?
Could it have been I said I love you too often?
Or was it the fact I loved you with all my heart?

To this day I still don’t know why you left, but I have a guess.

It was for the girlfriend.
The family you’ve always wanted.
The one you didn’t get with me.
It was the fact you had an excuse to run away.

Well thank you for running away, I found myself.

My love for poetry
For books, for art.
I found my feelings, and I found my heart.
I found out I’m male, and found out I love my family.
I found out more than I’ll ever admit to you.

To this day, you still live there.

In Minnesota, in hell.
With my two “siblings”
Siblings enough where we can fight
But not enough where we can call each other a family.

Well dad I have a question.
What is a family?
Is it blood to you?
Or is it living under the same roof?

To this day I will never know.

Good-bye dad.
Goodbye house.
Good-bye farm.
Good-bye siblings.

I fear my father’s hands, due to the fact
You don’t know which day
He’ll give a handshake
And which day he’ll try to strangle you
I fear my mother’s hugs due to shame
I don’t know which day it’s just a hug
And which day it’s a grasp of all that’s left in the world
I fear my cat
Knowing one day she’ll die and one day I’ll say goodbye to the
Only friend who kept me company in teenager-hood world
I fear coffee
For it’s too comfortable
Too much like home
Whispers to me, just another sip
God knows what I would do if I overdosed with coffee in hand
I fear men, funny, because I am one
I fear them because they have landed me in places I don’t want to be in
They have abused, assaulted, and hurt me in ways only god can imagine
I am deathly afraid of separation
I am petrified of marijuana
As it ***** me up more than any other drug
Lastly, I am afraid of myself, emo right?
But I am truly scared of what I am capable of.
What I can do.
What I can’t do.
Etc.

I should’ve been concentrating on reading a book.
But instead I sit here, at a modern day typewriter,
Asking, what do pronouns mean.
What’s the hidden meaning?
Do pronouns contribute to society or take away from society?
Do we as citizens of America understand what it’s really like to not feel comfortable in a said type of pronouns?
Or do we just feel uncomfortable in our own thoughts and use pronouns to cover it up.
Do pronouns cover our darkest, most dangerous, truth-telling secrets...
Or do we just hope and hope and hope that it will?

God, now that I finally understand what gender is to me,
I think I used she/her pronouns to conform,
And they/them pronouns to hide
And finally, he/him pronouns to accept.
To accept who I am.
To accept the “real” me.
To accept that I am different.

Anxiety sips at me because I’m a living example of what not to worry about
If you were to throw a weird microchip in me to see what my thoughts were,
Anxiety would be ****** as **** because god, what does an 18 year old have
That’s worriable?
Depression eats away at me due to the y'anna whole mental illness component
But it eats away at me even more because it knows I’m young and innocent.
I’m young and innocent so therefore it has everything to worry about.
Depression is the worrier in my head.. It worries if I will ever get better.
Why? Because dear god, if I get better I wouldn’t be worthy enough for depression’s deadly grasp.
And trauma, lastly, grips me for dinner. Due to the fact that it’s sad.
Trauma is sad I’m leaving it behind, for once.
Trauma is sad I’m moving on.
Trauma is distraught that I have a chance at not being the traumatized one.
Trauma is the depressed.
Drug abuse, he sat there stalking my every move.
Waiting for me to come home so I could finally be gunned against the wall and die.
And god it couldn’t wait for me to die.
The illness finally caught up.
All the illnesses caught up.
And this was the end.
You see, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and trauma make me up.
And in themselves, they make each other up.
The depression is the anxiety, the trauma is the depression, etc.

Anxiety sips from me
as though I’m it’s only bird feeder in the area
Depression eats away at me
as though I can only suffice for half of it's needs
And tonight? It’s hungry as it’s ever been.
Trauma kills me
As if it was an eagle looking for roadkill
Me being the roadkill
Drug abuse nailed me in the head waiting to **** me.
Waiting to **** me due to the fact I've been defeated.
So there they sit, all trying to defeat, the defeated me.

Bite me.