i’m not naive enough to compare myself to a rose,
whose soft petals and curves prevail beyond its thorns.

i’m not a flower.
i’m not sweetness,
or supple colors,
or life.

i am a mess of stems and spines, sharp angles and twisted roots,
and i will damage those who get close enough to touch.

i am senselessly cruel,
and sabotaging.
an aimless collection of failures and secrets,
****** towels and bruised knees.

i am four in the morning,
thrashing and screaming and weeping.
i am waking up still drunk,
i am an ache that never passes.

i am love, but not the wonderful kind.

i am selfish vices,
i am indulgence and self-denial.
and sometimes,
as the light of morning appears,
i can’t imagine what i’ve done
or where i’ve been.

Twisted light perforates the dust filled room and the pungent odour of history hangs in the air like stale bread and old forgotten pantomime costumes.
Yet somehow the smell recalls recollections of a jolly past. Transporting me back through the years, tumbling over and over in the rapids of time until I splash down and emerge as the keen eyed five year old I once was.
I can still hear the shrill screams of play bounce around my head and feel the boy in me longing to join them on the playground outside. I can feel the tight lace wrapped round my hand as I swing my unsurpassed conker to victory. I can still see the bouncing curly locks of the sweet little girls as they hop and skip to long forgotten nursery rhymes.  I can still feel the dried mud caked on my palms sending shudders of discomfort all down my spine and the cold drafts of air through the green hole covered knees of my short nylon trousers.
Swinging the blackboard round to reveal the partially erased remnants of the very last lesson, my mind adopts that old familiar position. Arms folded, head in arms wishing that time would move on.
Sadly my wish came true. Sure it took its time but these days time flows by like a babbling weir stopping for nothing.  
How I now long for that dripping tap like time once was. Those long summer breaks and endless days playing in the meadows where I lived. Even boredom is no longer as sweet. The kind of boredom where you aren't making excuses for not doing something. For these days there is always something that needs to be done.
Oh how I miss the innocence of youth that carefree era where ironically, what you desired, was everything you don’t want now.
Wiping a single tear from my cheek I left my old classroom, hopped over the fence and walked away from school one last time.

Red on my shirt
White are my jeans
The sky is blue
And I am free
Like the
American Dream