I am my fathers daughter.
I know this because he tells me every time he's drunk or every time I'm drunk
I think it started when my mother left
skipped town with the preacher
left me shaking in the bathroom holding my knees like a bad taste in my mouth
this is family
this is coming home or the lack of coming back
this is making toast for your mom when she's had too much wine and somehow ends up where it all began, in the apartment that was once hers but has since switched ownership
this house is not a home
without a mother
this house is not a home without the fathers daughter
we become glue for those who cannot become sober
we become wall, ball and chain, we become our fathers at such a young age we forget how to be anything besides drunk

we want to say that we built this house with our hands
with our blood
we built this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and stayed
i want to tell you that my father builds houses for a living but i have never lived in one
i want to tell you that my mother still asks how you're doing
i want to say that we built this house and it's never abandoned and we are never waiting by the windows
that we always have wood for the fireplace
we never drink alone
i never fall asleep in the shower
in this house our love keeps the lights on
you can feel it through the floorboards like vibrations through a phonograph through the hardwood through your back
we sleep monday through thursday and get paid on weekends to drink whiskey and slow dance in the kitchen
we roll around in bed trying to catch the light
our bodies become curtains or sponges
you soak me up like sunshine and nobody asks where i went
we always finish what we start
i become welcome mat, welcome back, come back,
come home
i turned the basement into a music room
when it rains for you it never floods
we built this house with our hands, with our love, with our blood
there is wood for the fireplace
the flames never spread

Amy speaks to me sometimes,

reminds me of the losing game that I’m playing:

I’ve put in all my coins, gambled all I could call mine

and she shakes her head but keeps her silence.

There are no rules, she knows this

it’s all in or nothing,

and she watches me give everything.

I resurrect every ghost to make me bleed,

and tear open this skin for meaning,

but what is the value of hollowed bones and haunted dreams?

How many revolutions until your words lose your voice?

How many revolutions until the sun burns my hands away from your eyes

so you can finally see the light?

I lost the heart in a wager for yours

only to return with empty palms

and another phantom shackled in the mind

that patrols the lock-up, and the whip comes down

at every clink of ball-and-chain – no prisoner stands a chance to escape.

How odd that every lash on the prisoner,

you’ll find on my wrist, on my back, on my neck;

how odd that every movement is a punishment;

how odd that you don’t see the manacles

I’ve bound myself with.

I had a dream about the world
a barren of dust, a shattered reality
an affliction had spread, a curse too strong
like cobwebs woven across ancient trees.

Curious, I went to touch the soil
I felt the despair of each grain
the scent, nauseating, obfuscating
each breath chokes me, makes me insane.  

I found a cliff with no end in sight
I steeled my heart, I stifled my cry
to abandon misery, I knew what I had to do
eyes shut, I flew towards my dive.  

The pit in my stomach grew free from the bonds
pulling me, killing me, slowly from the inside
my courage and all my haughty demeanor crushed
falling like the one who couldn't glide.  

I awoke with a startle, a hand on my chest
my heart beating pumps of despair in my veins
I saw the cracks of the world exist on my skin
I know what they are, they are my shame.  

Rub! Scratch! Tear them off
I try to shed the layers I hate
Cover? Hide? No, Burn it all
I cannot escape the cages I create.  

I wait for time to cover my wounds
gently hiding them in innumerable scabs
then slowly I peel them off and bleed
I dissect myself on a desolate slab.

I think I made you up inside my head and gave you a name so you’d come alive. I put mirrors behind your eyes to see them shine. I built a fire under your skin to feel the warmth that I could never find. I saved electricity for your fingertips and poison for your lips and a metronome for your heart.

I made you up inside my head, I gave you life in my heart, I made you real with wishes.

But nobody as beautiful and destructive as you can survive a resurrection only conjured of dreams, and so you let me go.