The light catches his body and
will not let it go, as I lie

and smile and make the appropriate
movements, always thinking -

my head never shuttering, never silenced
as I count up the crimes of the day,

reflected from sight of the light of him,
slapping my face as it hits.

Please don’t let me be like my Mother.

Don’t let me be the woman
Who never gave me a second glance
Because whenever it came to children
She stopped loving at one.

Don’t let me be
The woman who gave her all to the first born,
But when it was me
She gave it all up.

Don’t let me be the woman who smoked
Half a lung into ashes,
Every night thinking I don’t see
The grey puffs rising to my window
Darkening my room
Choking me as it slowly became the air I breathe.

When I grow up,
Don’t make me marry a man
Who never loved
And lived for numbers upon papers
Caring more about his reputation
Than his own blood he weaved into
Us.

When I grow up
Let me teach my children
Happiness and what it is like to smile,
Instead of drilling into their brains
All the reasons they should cry
And drown in their tears.

When I grow up,
Don’t let me search for my dreams
At the bottom of a shot glass
Taking more and more
As I get drunk on false, temporary happiness.

Don’t let me come home to my children,
Telling them how useless they are,
Throwing things at them
And finally collapsing into a heap of hopelessness.

Please don’t let my children
Have a father who never even cared
Enough to remember their birthdays
Let alone save them from the nightmare
That was their Mom.

Don’t let me become
The reason my children cried at their reflection
Because beauty never defined them
The reason they refused to eat
Since the flesh on their body
Kept growing in their eyes only.

Never let me be the woman
Who found only the ecstasy
She bought through men each night.

Even then it wasn’t love.
Even now it isn’t love.
She never learned to love people like me.
But I loved her.

Yet it was forced,
I only saw the mistakes she made
Every time I looked at her.
Including myself.

Please, when I grow up,
Let me learn to love my skin
And suffocate in all the things that make me
Beautiful.

Let me prove to the woman who claimed
To have raised me up
That I will never make the same errors or ever be like her.

I’ll love, I’ll live, I’ll care.
Three things she never grew up to do.

When I grow up,
Please don’t let me be like my Mother.

I thought that we were tired
Of grey clouds and words
That burnt our lungs
Like smoke

I thought that we were tired
Of illusions
And ignorance
I see it all
In your eyes

It hurts less
To see the world
As painful
It hurts more
To see its beauty

Swallow the sky whole
Take it down
With a few stars

Count the heart beats
You feel through my shirt
On one hand

Kiss me
Like you don’t mean it
Smile and say how much you love me
Like you do

I can hear your honesty
Like the thunder behind
An azure sky

There's a part of me that wants to die
So that when my lungs are fighting for air
I remember how to live.

And in that moment I'll plead my case
With words I can no longer form,
And whispered prayers I cannot speak

Because I'm dead,
Not just on the inside, but completely
Gone.

People will wipe their tears, throw away
Dry Kleenex tissues and quickly abandon
The memory of my human form.

I'll live in a cramped box with two angels
Who quiz me, run tests on my soul,
The only logic in liquid air, sometimes ice
When the ground freezes, and the moles
Dig deeper, using my bones to dig further still.


When I traced the wires
On the fence between my playground and
The wilderness in my hometown,
I didn't know what it meant to truly die.
Because as a child I felt dead when I was
Unappreciated or unseen

Little did I know, little that I was,
If I died, that's what I would forever be.

this is the way
the world works:
by threading my arm
through yours
in a floral weave
of madness and grace
and then ripping apart
the light,
sending in the dark,
only to yell surprise!
the light’s been here
this whole time