Dart 1: I did the dishes
Dart 2: I cleaned my room
Dart 3: I mailed my thank you letters
Dart 4: I walked the dog.
My mom and I love to play darts.
She always hits the bullseye,
I always hit the second ring never being being able to match her superiority.
Begging her to let me win,
she doesn't understand that I don't know how to play as well as she does.
After all she was a teenager at one point,
She did learn to shoot lies as darts,
But I'm still learning how to skin the truth with the feathers of my own darts.
I ask her what the score is,
'Mads, you're down by four, if you actually did what you were told and followed the rules of the game, maybe you wouldn't be so behind.'
I was always down by four.
And it was always for the same reasons:
Dart 1: I did the dishes
Dart 2: I cleaned my room
Dart 3: I mailed my thank you letters
Dart 4: I walked the dog
I've been playing this game for 17 years,
The needle of a dart is sharp especially with the venom of my mothers tongue.
I ran up to my room,
Shutting my door so they didn't puncture the filth buried beneath my pores,
Oozing truth that I didn't want to face.
They dug the tips of their teeth into my door.
They were shooting in through my window so I pushed myself back to the door,
But they locked it.
Collapsed on the ground I sat there rocking myself.
Letting the lies scrape at the bullseye that my body played on.
I dragged my tears like war paint across the cliff of my cheeks,
present my target to the open door.
Time to play another round,
Time to face the darts that I have made.
The lies will keep piling until you learn to face them, until you yourself can't handle their weight.