All I can think about is the passenger seat of your car.
Torn up apolostry and 150,000 miles of nothingness, the only kind of somethingness I ever grew up with.

You used to wake me.
A few hours before the sun would rise when only God was still awake, when darkness was the only thing we could taste.

I was 5.

A pair of scissors in my hands and a 20 minute drive into the nice neighborhoods.

Ones with spare bedrooms when we never had any bedrooms to spare.

It would be spring time.

Like April kissed May
& the Earth came back home to tell us she loves us after being away.

We would steal flowers.

Fists full of roses, hands carved by thorns. Daises.
Sun flowers.
Tulips.
Daffodils.

We would fill the back seat.
I think - people forgot that the flowers don't sleep at night.
They are still there, waiting for the silence of a sunrise to wake us all up.
Every night I thought they were waiting for us.

For me.

For my hands, still so small, to cradle their broken necks.

My mother was always good at holding beautiful things just a little too tightly.

Now mom - I wake up alone in my bedroom at 3am and I can still smell wet earth and the fear of being caught.

I rise looking for dirt on my shoes, or petals to tell me..

But now I don't find anything.
Just hands still stained with rose thorn kisses.

You used to always say I was a good seed in your garden, and momma I think I've finally bloomed.
A wild flower.
Tired of thunder storms.

A few weeks ago I handed you 1,500 dollars. Poverty is a ***** word we share sheets with.
I know you needed it.
I know I won't ask for it back.
I know some part of you could barely bare to ask, a tongue turned violet, bit backward and ashamed.

I know it's hard to make rent momma
I know it's hard to put food on the table momma

I know,

I know Momma.

But I am 19 years old, and you have taught me to pull the things I love up by the roots and **** them.
To hold them captive.
Like you used to with pills and pipes.

I never knew how to love any other way.

But I thank God,
The stars and the sun,
For these bouquets of heart break.

For this love.
For this insanity.
For this insomnia.
For a garden full of broken steams.
Of broken necks.
Of a home built on top of soft petal carcasses.

You taught me to hurt the things I love.
But I'm just now learning to love from an arms length away.
I know I am fire.
Smoke in these wild fire lungs.
I have to learn to not burn myself.
To not burn down forests I call home.

Momma you've taught me to stop picking flowers in the middle of the night.

And to instead tell them how much they mean to me in the morning.

That love under a cover of darkness, might not be love after all.
Just starving.

A hunger to hold something that I love so much it hurts.