I said once this place was where dreams came to die,
So why am I happy here?

I can see the years etched into these peoples faces,
On line for every life they should have lived but didn’t.
Creased skin coating arthritic bone;
Comatosed souls in caracasses.

Defiant if not alive.

Because there’s not an eye that doesn’t glisten with mischief in this prison.
Solidarity and laughter while we peel back the skin on our knuckles and chip away bone.

As though the blue plasters can patch up the damage from years where it didn’t trickle down.

If I were to bottle this it would be

Fleeting moments of such deep joy it’s hard to recollect the moments of utter misery,
Of which there were more.

It would be bitter loneliness without the sweet tang of friends,
The ache of realising alienation isn’t about being alone.

It would be waves
Crashing into rocks after washing over us
Curling our ankles on pebbles
Tripping but running headfirst anyway
Toes in the sea.
It would smell like sun cream  
With the coarseness of sand
Salt and sun and summer.

It would sound like jazz time on a friday afternoon
Blues, show tunes and improv.
Empty balconies,
Wind
Leaves
LMTs
Conversions I listen into but don’t join.
Thunderous silence.

It’s white walls awash with laughter,
Paint fumes and flying
Fresh puddles
Stifled tears
The longing for something more.

I wonder why it took another mans tears for your ears to open to the truth.
Years I’ve spent crying over you,
Getting drunk off the whiskey residue on your skin,
Spinning in and out of your life
Alarmed and dizzy.
A meteorite that never quite hit the mark.

How were you to know you used to be the sun,
That you’d cast us into an ice age?
We will orbit you until there is nothing,
Spinning ourselves into oblivion.

I wrote once that your hands cradled dust,
But that doesn’t do justice the worlds your hands crafted
Or the lives you lived.
A father, first and foremost.
It saddens me I will never know all your children.
I doubt you feel despair that you never knew them either.

My father used to be a stranger
occupying the same four walls I sheltered in
Occasionally offering me a tea
But forgetting I don’t drink milk.

He introduced me to the feeling of rage.
A mechanical voice box goading chemical reactions,
My catalyst, if you will.

Now we drink oat lattes together
And swear to fill the silence,
But it’s comfortable.

And when he messing up acronyms,
I correct him.

I don't pretend to know why Eve ate the apple
but I know she's not the one who ****** us.

He created Her for Him.
A Marionett made on a whim, discarded.
The predesecor to the ****** Mother.
Mary, I'm so sorry.

I wonder who realised first their limbs had strings?  
A lamb and a shepard
Born for slaughter.

We were all daughters once.

I sat through sermons week in, week out,
never a doubt about where I was meant to fit.
Meek
Mild
Submissive
Mother

I wonder what my daughters opinion is on having never been born.

I stopped reading the bible before I could discover the word for a Childless Mother but I'm pretty sure it's Women.
What does that make me.

When I eat an apple,
I like to cut it into slices and eat each segment individually.  
I'll throw away the seeds, nibble at the core, discard the skin.
We were told she took a bite
but I often wonder just how Eve committed her sin
and what is taste like.

I do not begrudge Eve the apple.
I begrudge Adam the audactiy to ask for a partner in suffering.

I believe my brother will grow to hurt,
to hit,
to lash out when he can't reach the words he needs.
I believe he will grow to silence as he has been silenced
And to intimidate as he was intimidated.
Loved, yes.
But loathed more.
When the money runs out love is stunted.
It can't buy happiness
but it sure helps feed the hunger,
And no one can argue being deprived of affection isn't a sort of gut wrenching starvation.

There's an ache in his eyes,
an emptiness,
and a promise that whatever fills it will hurt as he has.
He, who doesnt understand the difference between freedom and power,
Who longs for both having tasted neither
but like the starved will blindly accept either.
He is like my mother - lost.
All the lost are fearful,
and most of the fearful are violent.