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Today is the first day of my life.
I will grow. I will be steady.
There will be days when I stand in the rain, let it soak me to my skin.
Feel the beating of my heart, your heart against the pavement, pounding in my ears.
I sit on the bench amongst the leaves.
A vast sea of sod that makes me wonder how I could think that I am alone.
I used to wonder who I was. I would look at my arms, my legs, so alien.
But now I know who I am. I’ve tested the waters. Felt them burn me, boil me.
Yet each day I came back. Each day I wanted more.
The insanity of my life defined my every moment, led me to my deepest low, my highest high.
I sat around for days, neglecting my showers.
Sleep was for those too afraid of the night.
If only you knew the things I saw before my eyes, waking dreams.
And it all sounds like a story, like it could even be you
until you don’t even know who you are anymore.
You don’t even know how I curled up and cried on my bathroom floor that night,
my body stinging from the scent of you.
I don’t think I can ever forget.
I’ll be cleaning myself of you until I can’t remember my name.
Until everything that I know is erased by the bustling of time.
I haven’t seen You
since the second grade
when I changed my name.
when You lost me,
and things changed.
I started to wonder if I’d ever see You.
but You were too far gone.
You weren’t my father anymore,
You were just the man that made me possible.
however, I was just as manic as You,
just as addicted.
You left what You could in my DNA
but I cycled down my own path
and fell hard without guidance.
tripped upon things that only
the silence of the night can recollect.
alone in my third story bedroom,
I saw the world before me
each endeavored existence.
felt the night breathe its cool breath
into the slumber of my visions.
You and I were the same then.
there was not a shred of difference
I grew as a monster does by its own devices.
fueled by diseases I couldn’t even name
and though I had not seen You
nor heard your voice in the last eight years
I was the same as You. We were the same.
I am so hungry—though I will not eat.
I am so tired—though I will not sleep.
And to think just moments ago
I was breezing down the highway,
Speakers blasting, vibrating sweet
Rhythms along my thighs: It would
Make the sky weep.
I sit at a window and
for once my world is engulfed in total silence.
The sun shines through my window.
I’ve never seen a window so real.
Never have I fogged up the glass
with more zeal, as my adamant fingers
scribble an “M.” and it fades.
You see, I am just that—“M”
nothing defines me more acutely
than the letter
—how I desire to truncate
the remaining, straggling letters of its
completion—it is sinful.
Because, really, all I want is
to be alone, and ain’t that selfish?
Ain’t it selfish to desire silence
when the world is alive with the sounds of
love, song, laughter.
I reject those things.
Everything is temporary
and it seems easier to lose them
than to never have had them at all.
And, oh, it hurts.
So sick am I of being hurt.
Though it is easier to sacrifice
than to be sacrificed. And so I forsake thee,
sounds of the universe.
I shall sit in my quiet corner.
And lady time nor the remaining letters of my name shall be the wiser.

— The End —