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Grandma’s kitchen didn’t
have room for me.
There were no warm fuzzies,
honeyed memories, or even
a space at the table.

With her smothering, mothering
of my cousins I was an end of the line,
barely know your name, grandchild.

My arms never reached nor did my lips ask
for affection…Grandma didn’t have any urges
to spoil an apple outside the walls of her orchard.

Times were tough…I didn’t get a choice
to be angry or sad…I slipped into the slot
life made for me, and was taught my first
dandelion lesson of how to bloom in drought.
It just rained
Bullets
Puddles in the streets
Blood
Water falls down
Tears
I remember the first time someone explained to me what the word gay meant.
We were in middle school
Playing on the swing set behind Stoy Elementary
"He’s so gay," she said
Bitter disgust poured out of her mouth with every syllable
I could not think as to why being happy could be such a horrible thing
And so I asked
My exact words being
“Whats so wrong with being happy?”
Now both my friends looked at me weird
“Don’t you know what gay means?”
“Doesn’t it mean to be happy?”
“You’re such a little kid, gay does not mean happy. Gay is a boy who likes another boy”
I stood there wondering why it mattered so much that a boy liked another boy;
why it was such a distasteful thing.
And why it meant gay couldn’t still mean happy.
 Sep 16 PhantomDreamer
Kai
I know –
I know,
I died for nothing,
I clawed at chains and ripped a bullet out of my skin,
I let it bleed
I watched God leave
I can’t help but to tear off the flesh,
I love the burning, I love the anguish
I need to feel it, feel alive
I can’t help but to split the bones in two
I love the temporary relief, the quick release
I want God
I toss and turn, oh how badly
I want God
Hi
 Sep 16 PhantomDreamer
Lily
"Why don't you try to reach for the stars?"

"Darling, sometimes I don't even know how to reach sanity"
-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------------

                                      ­           Spiraling
                                                       ---
                                                    Down
    ­                                                    -
           ­                                           The
                  ­                                      -
                                                    Drain
      ­the sink,                                ------                      ­              my lungs,
      it's pink     ----------------------------------------------------   are frayed
                                        ------------------­---------
                                         please oh please just
                                              --------------­-----
                                                ¡Stay Away!
                                                     -------
                                                  breathi­ng
                                                     -------
                                                   heaving
                                                      ---­---
                                                  mindless
  ­                                                     ----
                                                   seething
                                                        ---
                                                     spiral-
                                                       ----
                                                      -ing
 ­                                                       ---
      ­                                               down
                                                         -
                                                       the
                                                        --
  ­                                                   drain
                                                         -

--------------------------------------------------------------­----------------------------
Refuge to some,
A battlefield to others,
A chronically online
Midwest single mother-
Who loves to lay in the rain
And feel it on her skin
Enjoying all the storms outside,
Though they all come from within.

Is she a tornado?
Or maybe a meteor shower?
Beautiful in what she does-
not recognizing her power
Or maybe it's a fault,
To hide away in the in-between?
Participating in all activities while remaining completely unseen.

She glides right through your sky,
A pretty view for you-
Until she lands upon your ground
Destruction does ensue.
You thought she was just mesmerizing,
Easily made to bend,
If that's the kind of love you crave
You've picked the wrong girlfriend.

She puts things back together
At a slowed down lego pace,
And when she doesn't like the result?
Her progress completely erased.
So it's back to the drawing board,
Though she's never been good with paint.
Maybe some blame falls to you,
loving chaos but expecting a saint.
If I'm mindful of your trauma
And you're mindful of mine
Don't you think it'd be easier?
I guess easy has never been our vibe
I've been aware
for many a year,
but cut off by him,
for crimes he accuses
for crimes undisclosed,
his silence is wider than
the great oceans,
with no means of passage.
till one day a word,
his brother uses a word
that makes no pretense,
that shocks, stuns, and
force!admits me to a reality,
I, knew but couldn't admit

schizophrenic.

here I am sundered speechless;
as a new form of sadness now
internally prevails, and I am
even more quiet than usual,
contemplative, they call it,
but
I recognize sad/mad in every one
of its manifold disguises, and wonder
just how much, own ingenious genes,
the paucityof my impoverished down~
bringing brought, bought, caught,
contributed to this loss, this onus,
this cross that has no answer to the
                                   *only question that matters,
                                     how much,
                                     am I the guilty party
                                                           ­              the disaster father
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