Supple skin, insides of elbows
we scratched til they bled
split lips and scraped knees
I would follow you anywhere
Burrowed in your old clothes
you didn’t wear dresses
so neither did I.
Curled up on your too-green carpet
watching the fish in your tank
commit suicide one by one.
Can we stay the same?
Before Momma’s on the phone
shouting about faulty vaccines.
Before the world descends upon us.
In the night
you would slowly voice the thoughts:
what is the value of a human life
if it is miserable. If people laugh and mock,
if that life is silently and hopelessly
alone, and suddenly aware of it’s own strangeness.
It takes hours, to string this together
creeping towards 3am in the pitch dark.
we are sitting on the floor,
I promise with all of my eight year old honor
all of my fighting might,
I will not abandon you to this cruel world trapping
you. All this unknown grief
for the emotions you cannot understand.