Dear customers,
I had no idea my name was
Dear,  honey,  baby
Or hey, you
Thank you for informing and dehumanizing me
By giving me these new titles which you deem appropriate
Just because I am a woman
Or a person who is serving the likes of you.

Dear customers,
Holiday season is supposed to be joyous
Just because you feel you can indulge
Doesn't mean you need to order everything on the menu
I mean hey, I get it
Who am I to judge your life choices?
After all, I work in fast food
So that must mean I am lazy and incompetent
Right?

Dear customers,
Specifically, teenage boys.
I don't quite know who you're trying to impress
But none of us find it funny when you
Scream into the drive thru speaker.
Or make a mess of our lobby
Or order $40 worth your weight in beef
And deep-fried delicacies
Fifteen minutes before closing time.

Dear customers,
The next time you throw money at me
Your hand comes with it.
I am not a piggy bank with a slit in my side
Nor am I a fountain for you to toss your spare change into.
You can take the extra half a second to place your fee into my hand
Thank you.

Dear customers,
Here's the section where I discuss the
****** old men who hit on me.
Some classic charmer's that sent me head over heals are
"Your voice is so ****, you should be a ******* operator"
-Anonymous *******, about 45
And
"Why don't you lean over the counter and let me spank you"
-Secret **** bag, closer to 50
That is just scratching the surface
But you get the idea.

Dear customers,
The answer to
"How are you today?"
Is not
"I'll take a number three"
With a scowl on your face.
However, it is also not
"Oh well my sister's dog died"
"And my chiropractor's daughter's son has a doctor's appointment today"
"Oh, and did you see the medal my grandson won?"
Why can no one ever answer a simple
"Lovely, thanks, and you?"

Dear customers,
Sorry to burst your egotistical bubbles
But you are not always right.

Dear customers,
Lastly,
If I clearly have one foot out the door
It does not mean ask me for something.
I am no longer indebted to you.
I'm out.
Goodbye.

I used to pine for you.
Your acid flesh saturating my hair
Your naked crystal caressing my skin
And when I was scared
I would remember how it felt when
Your tide would gently and forcefully pull me out
How the twisted tree trunks of your love wrapped their branches around me
And I would think of you in rhymes that did not make sense
Prayers that made it seem like I believed in something
Maybe you were my God
Because part of me almost wanted to be impregnated with your love child
At one point or another
So maybe it would make you care.
That part of me disintegrated pretty quickly
As your words became synonymous with the crackling of fire
The snapping that bones make when they break and turn to dust
Your voice could decompose me in an instant
And you never seemed to mind.
So now, that I might have your offspring
Living inside of me
I don't know how to feel.
Taking a test would just reaffirm the fact that my future could be in shambles
Wires wrapped around themselves
A construction zone ready to ignite and explode
So I wait for my monthly offering
That Mother Nature so graciously delivers to my body
Reminding me that I am the only inhabitant in it thus far.
I fear for any child that even has a chance of existing
Because while it would be beautiful
It would be ****** into the middle
Of this beautiful toxicity.

PTSD is not something you get over.
It is when soldiers get tired of hearing their own shots fire
Into a purple horizon of nothingness.
It is when assault victims are scared of becoming a statistic
And their brokenness is suffocating
It is when fear compels the mind to change
And it willingly obliges.
PTSD is when the darkness of human nature becomes evident
It is when it's stronghold is suddenly
More prominent than the beauty in the world
It's brash fingers create a vacuum
That ***** the sanity from your mind
Until you wake up in the middle of the night screaming
"Don't shoot me!"
"Don't **** her!"
You see him and now he is with your little sister
Taking her into his Jeep
While you stand there, watching
******* because you can do nothing about it.
This has not happened
And probably never will
But you are crippled by paralyzing bouts of anxiety and guilt and fear
From which your mind cannot console you
You can no longer hide the loss
That this event, this person, this illness
Has placed strategically within you.
It is when you will do anything to get these memories to stop playing on repeat
An endless loop maybe ended by alcohol
Check
Cutting
Check.
Promiscuity
Check
Anything that will eliminate cycle of not knowing
Of reliving
If only for a short time
Even pretending you believe in God
Because it makes it seem like there is a reason for this confusion
But then you begin to question why God would do this to his child
So you digress into darkness once again
Left feeling unsure.
PTSD is when you stop repressing memories
And they come back so forcefully that they knock you to the ground
Leaving you bruised and ******
Leaving you lost.
PTSD is different from other sicknesses
Because you do not feel sick
You feel there
Like you are in his bed again
And his room smells like mushrooms
That is actually a field of grenades
Waiting to explode throughout your small body
You remember the tone of his words
Slipping from his lips as though they are snakes
Strangling me, leaving breath unable to escape
This is not sick
As you feel no symptoms
But an altered state of consciousness
You do not even realize you are disconnecting as it happens
But this is Hell
This is war
You are broken
And the worst part about it
Is that you must understand your triggers
Your dissociations
Before you can get better.

My parents ask me                                               whenever I am in my room
                                                                   For several hours at a time
"What do you do all day?"
I sit in my room writing poems
                                   for boys who will never write back
Writing letters                                           to people who have abused me
Writing letters                                     to my eating disorder
"Hi, how are you?"
                                                                 "Haven't seen you in a while."
((And I'm ever so ******* thankful for that))
However, this time she responded
                                                  "It's almost Thanksgiving,"
"We should talk"
It's like she's carving her name into my bones                      one more time
It's like she finds purpose in ******* the life from my heart            with a straw
She is a cut that just won't heal
A stalker you can't get rid of
And yet,                                                                           you continue to want her
She is a paradox
Because you feed her           open mouth with the         grapes fit for                  a      queen
But she is the evil                                               witch.
She reminds me that               I need her
Traveling through the canals in my                             bones
Shooting up my                                         spine
Making my                                                             blood flow in waves
I           cannot            control             her
She tells me again,                        as if I hadn't                           considered it
That these holidays are going to be                           hard
They are going to try to                rip the skin            off of me
Pluck each individual                                                                   eyelash from me
Seeing how much I can take                                                                                                                      
before I lose it.
After all, my      grandfather          is              gone
And the last time he saw me
She was still                              my partner
Attached               at the hip
Last Thanksgiving, she not only              sat        with      me at the table
But held      my        hair         back                  as I vomited my dinner into the toilet
It's so            sad          and               sick that sometimes                I miss her
Like an old friend,                                              an old pair of shoes
So worn and broken
But still somehow             a part of me.
Still, I                            refuse to                                          sink
I am a ball of fire                                ready to explode
But I will contain
the                                                     urge
                                     to
               relapse
Until my
                         very
last
                  breath.
She will not be the thing     that                          kills me
I will                            die                                                               fighting her off
Escaping her talons
Recognizing she plants                                                                 bombs in me
Not roses.
So, when                       my parents ask me                                           what I do all                                            day now
I can                say
                                                      "Live."

I am that feminist that cites Betty Friedan in her arguments
Who will tell you to bite your tongue if you think women have equal rights
I am that liberal who stands up for the rights of others
While preaching about white privilege
I am that democrat who goes on Marxist rants
And looks kindly upon socialistic programs
I am that American who finds kinks in the system
But also deeply loves my country.
I am that *****, *****, ****
Who thinks I should have the right to my own body
And the government should not
I am that student who thinks the education system is ****** up
And prays for future generations because the common core is going to fail them
I am that Christian who refuses to associate with the Republican Party
But loves God with all her heart.
I am that loud-mouth who will tell you to check yourself
Before you tell a **** joke
I am that activist who will die fighting for her cause
And I will love every second of it.

I am up in arms about oppression
Why don't we see our own privilege?
Who are we to fail to acknowledge our gains from this world
That are not earned by us
But inherited?
Privilege is never having to think about it
It is sitting in a classroom and having college be an expectation
Not an ambition
It is equal pay for equal work
It is women getting *****
And boys getting shot
It is black children learning to be afraid of the police
Who are supposed to protect them
But instead
Oppress them.
I am up in arms about people getting offended
Because talking about these things is uncomfortable.
Educating people about *** is uncomfortable
But we do that to prevent things from happening in the future
The same goes for racism
Sexism
Privilege in general
If we do not know about it
There is nothing we can do to curb the problem.
I am up in arms about the failing systems
Education
Justice
Legal
That our future generations are being ****** into
Filtered in like cattle, they march
One by one
Into ignorant landfills
That feed them garbage
But there is too much to sift through
That they accept it as fact and move on.
I am not up in arms about Ferguson
Steubenville
Any other place where
Male
White
Upper class
Privilege is an issue
Because it is an issue everywhere.
I am up in arms about the precedent being set
For the generations to come.

Twelve times.
That's how many rounds were fired
Into eighteen year-old Michael Brown
As his head absorbed the gun powder
And he fell to his death
On the hot asphalt beneath his spine.

Twelve times.
The frequency at which twenty eight year-old Darren Wilson
Shot this boy in the brain
He is responsible for taking a life prematurely
He is responsible for advancing the race precedent
Set by prior generations.

Twelve times.
The jury could have indicted him
Held him accountable for his actions
But instead they let him walk free.
Freedom, the very thing Wilson extrapolated from Brown.
Freedom, the very thing many brown boys and girls in America
Will never see
We teach them there freedom does not matter
It is in the hands of white men
As it always has been.

Twelve times.
And many times after that
Will children
Who are just as American as any other human being living on this soil
Be told they are not good enough
Merely because of the pigments in their skin
They are worth less than others
And why do we let this prevail?
Because we do not want to change it.
We are part of the problem.

Twelve times.
I can count more than that
In which I have been the beneficiary of white privilege
Which I did not earn
No, you see
White privilege is being able to say
"I am disgusted with this verdict"
But I will never be the direct recipient of its consequences.

Twelve times.
The fact that people still claim it was self-defense
Disgusts me.
Most would agree that
Beating a child into submission
Rather than acting on another form of discipline
Is criminal
Therefore, just because you want to believe
That firing twelve bullets into a barely grown boy's head
Is acceptable during an attack
Does not make it just.

Twelve times.
The starting point
The amount white people can do
About racial preference.
Start by learning from history.
And learn what you can do to change it.

Twelve times.
The amount of shots it took
To end a boy's life
The fire has been taken from his lively eyes and soul.
But the real flame
Has just been ignited.