My naivety died with my father
at the bottom of Lake Shelbyville
when I was seven years old
and still losing little teeth.
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I turn twenty-four next week;
January the fifteenth.
I can still sense the difference between you and I
by the long pauses in between weather talks.
-
I find solace in solitude
and that will never change.
Too many years of misunderstandings,
dope addled family, and conflict avoidance.
-
My mother has an addictive personality
which she tries to superimpose onto me
as a way to keep me away from the shit.
She wants me to be her negative film; her opposite.
-
I wish my grandma had leveled with her
instead of surrounding drugs with the mystique
and the danger of a loaded weapon
in a teenager's back pocket; denim daredevil.
-
Grandma.
Now that is a name I miss saying.
She was the stern force that matured me
and my protector in time of matriarchal absence.
-
Her mind started to die years before her body did
and I had to sit and watch it happen, helpless,
with my mother; her daughter.
Alzheimer's, falls, strokes, and in a flash she wasn't there.
-
I don't find myself rooting for the cause these days.
I just want to escape where I came from;
who I am, but the path is circular.
I'm accepting the fate, bathing in lust, and waiting for summer.