I am too wind, salt water not from the sea
Wild intense uncontained
A lover says to me' we could never date, I would always be second best to your fantasies"
He expects this to bruise but I hold this to my heart like the sweetest compliment
I have always wanted to be too much for someone
My mother says her premature grey hair is because of me, I look down thoughtfully but I rejoice inside
She did not want fire from her womb
A tan porcelain doll with long hair to comb filled her dreams during pregnancy
Did her heart burn and my violent kicks not give me away?
I am not broken, I am not a fledgling thrown from the nest
I have not given up on myself
I will not be fixed, held taunt by ropes I do not hold myself
I am special
Clouds that cover the sun
I will move so much water
Drink the seas
Scale the sky
Just watch
Watch me fly

I have been told for millenia that i need to stop being so sensitive
feel less
care less
but don't be careless
school doesn't matter but get good marks
contradictions lying in the recesses of my brain
what my mother doesn't seem to understand
is that i am forged from fire
i am not a water baby whose occasional destruction can be understood
i am not calm
i was not made to be bathed in
i am a fire you see
i burn and destroy
my giving light is a coincidence
my giving warmth is a bonus
i set the world up in flames and people covet me
i was meant for heat and light and to tarnish the gold of the oppressors
do not limit me mother
i am not the fruit of your *****
i have sprung ready made from the branches of a higher purpose
do not diminish me
i can't be made small
let me be or i will **** you
slowly
and burn your flesh with my tongue

A shell in a thunderstorm covers me
And I am warm
Protected
Listening to raindrops shatter roof tiles
Like the tapping feet of a chimney sweep
In the past
Unfurnished, bare
These cavernous rooms echo with memory
I think about the children who've grown up here and left
The hands touching these walls before mine were fully formed
My brother lies on the carpet and I see this moment as a memory in the future
Looking at his small form coloring a book that will be thrown away
I think about the future
About the children who will inherit this house and touch the walls I've touched
Smile in the rooms I've smiled in
Cry on the floors I've dropped tears on
All sensation is already memory
I'm afraid of forgetting

People always say there are some things too terrible to build beauty out of
I am lying down on a couch in the prayer room of a hospital
Facing the huge cross I don't pray to staple-gunned onto the wall
Waiting, while my battery dies, to hear if my father will live or not
I'm not trying to make this sound poetic or romantic or even bearable
Let's just agree I've never felt so lost in my life, not even when I had no friends and I fought daily with my mother
If my father dies, so does she, and I never pictured myself as the protagonist of an Orphans Plight story
Certainly not with two younger brothers to care for
I feel guilty, because I've imagined him dying sometimes, I always imagine it as a relief but I feel nothing now, not even numbness
I wonder if God is punishing me for those thoughts and wishes
I'm trying to out-pray those thoughts, counting the blessings on the lines of my fingers
Hoping to heaven someone up there will take pity on me and save his life
This evening I told my aunt I wouldn't care if he came back whole or not, I just want his dying-seal laugh back on the dinner-table

Sometimes we don't know if we're going to be okay
and even that is okay
One day at a time while the grief subsides
if it ever does

It is a windy night and the hospital beds are all filled in my mind
with loved ones
lonely and aching in the dark
I've never seen my father cry and I never want to
My brother has regressed for the night back into childhood and is sleeping in my mother's room because she has two double beds unfilled
An empty home
An empty tower
There is so much silence I never realised was there
Usually covered up with yelling
Fighting
Usually me
Usually my father
But one of us is missing and this home has dissolved into a graveyard
I never realised I cared this much
You Know
Just the other day I stared at myself in the mirror after a crying jag and saw a red face, ugly and disappointing
I always wanted to be someone who cried delicately
Well, today I was on the phone and somehow started crying without realising it, my face did not redden and the tears looked elegant
I never want to cry like this again
If God is out there He knows I've been angry and hateful
Hating this family like a curse
Wanting out
But right now, ******* hell, right now
I just want my father home

I walked on the sidewalk at night when my parent's were asleep
Because they don't allow me out at night
And I saw a cat cross the road
It walked along for a bit and then jumped up comically
I walked over to see what happened and it hissed at me
It's tail as thick as my upper arm
I saw a frog on the floor next to it, dead
As I walked home I didn't know whether to laugh or cry

I fall in love with people who have your name.