my childhood was removed from me
inside of a blue mustang
and what remained after that
I tried to barter off the highest bidder
but I grew,
not up,
but forward
further away
slowly releasing
hands of defiance
fists chock full of hopeless words
like anger, the flavor that aches the bone,
the cold kind,
more barren than the green of Christmas lights
glimmering off the icy veneer of a white picket fence
overeager, in the apathy of theatrics,
to strip off the remainder
because the empty feeling that followed
might one day
make a decent poem