I think the most motherly I've seen my Mother is in a dream
One with high stakes and eager fights
Where she stood fearful
Not for herself but for my safety
Grabbing my hand to protect from an eager fist

Protective

I wish I could dream those dreams with conscious thoughts
With ambitious hope that I would outweigh herself
Selflessness towards those you bore, like the movies
But I always know when I'm awake
The lines don't blur as much as they did when I was a child
And I am left with a hole
Longing for a state of reality that could never be
Dreaming of dreams

"I am happy because it is all I can be,"

The just becauses' twisting around your tongue as another statistic sticks in your teeth,

"I'm not alone."

Are words coated in the sweetness of pretense, the inevitably suicidal thoughts of a generation give you solace,

"I'm feeling good today"

Words you use to describe the fact you can't play your favorite video game any more, without the guilt of not know if you'll ever go back.

"I'm tired"

And for once the honesty comes out like a sewage leak; there is a harmony of agreeability in your statement, the words both acknowledged and ignored.

"Goodnight"

To toss and toil you lay your bones and finally close your eyes, thoughts wildly awake but silence envelopes you.

Sometimes I remember the scorn of my family,
Effigies of bloodlines crossed into a tired face.
I remember my mother,
Her vice was appearance-
Not her own but that of others.
Every day was judgment
She’d pick us before we bloomed and left wilted children
Questioned the lack of fruit
Not with self-deprecation but with scorn
How dare we cross the farmer who sowed the seeds and watered the crops?
How dare we look towards the sky for comfort?
When that cold trowel could dig in our necks.

I remember one time my mother asked me if she was the problem
A lie, I’ve heard that question many times
How can you curse a broken human more than she does herself
And somewhere in my head, I justify it
Consider the kindness built on vanity to be kindness nonetheless
Flowers do not need to be alive to be beautiful
They can be so frailed and dried up they become immortal
A crumbling tombstone of decay
And we marvel at them
And I remember that I am a product of my mother

I knew a kid in highschool
Rather to say I knew him would be an overstatement,
He was a friend of a friend at most,
The boy that sat directly in front of me in my economics class
Second seat from the right, second to last from the back
The corner of the classroom between the whiteboard wall and the windows
I remember that scene like a diagram,
I couldn’t tell you anything I learned from the class but,

I knew a kid in highschool
He was best friends with my childhood best friend
He wasn’t quiet, wasn’t loud- he was a normal highschool boy
I remember the last words I said to him
Well not quite, I remember the vague idea
Something along the lines of it only gets worse
He was talking about the theoretic project where we role played
Each kid acting out as if they were in the real world
He said he was overwhelmed by the amount of work
I told him it only gets worse

I knew a kid in highschool
He killed himself during the weekend
The Monday they announced in I was sick
I was sick
His obituary isn’t up on the internet anymore
Neither is his facebook, he is nothing but a yearbook page
The page to a book I couldn’t afford
He is a memory on bookshelves filled with dust

I knew a kid in highschool but I had to ask a friend to confirm his existence
That I didn’t just make up a daydreamed suicide
I’m so tired of wondering what’s left of us when we die
I spend most of my life running from evidence of my existence
No photos, no yearbooks, nothing with me or my name
I knew a kid in highschool

I hate odd numbers, to be more exact I fear them
That is not to say it applies to every facet of my life
Three at the end of the day is my favorite number
It's just in every other circumstance that they seem to haunt me
Like my nightmares only occurring when my alarm is set odd
Something caused by one of my benign idiosyncracies
-Nonetheless, I'm faced with odd numbers when I sleep
When I awake
When another family member has chosen the grave as a resting place
When times seem to change unexpectedly
I'm anxious about many things
But all seem minuscule compared to those numbers that follow me
Unbreaking and ration
They belong; I do not

When I was younger I saw stars in everything
But now my mind has turned to cityscapes,
Angular in design
I look up and see only the glimmer of passing planes
Everything has turned into a product of the unattainable
I miss the stars, the past, the memories
But perhaps this city skyline isn't so bad