I figure I’ll find out more about myself

the more I break

up myself

into little tiny pieces.

I figure my mother might find herself after she’s cleaned up the house,

but hoarders can only do so much,

and she sought salvation with crystals and books and hiding away our pasts in boxes and boxes that are stacked from floor to ceiling.

I figure my dad has found himself; he used to

eat lunch alone in his car at work,

just so people would stop bothering him and he learned how to fly

but he hasn’t flown away

and I don’t think he ever will.

Annie is simple. Loves to laugh and

wants a white picket fence and all the

easy stuff and I am just

the stubborn kid who still pushes her nose up on car windows and

leaves marks of her face to see later,

the girl who my mother says will make

the worst mother and the girl who mother says

is too driven for her own good.

They know about the every-night

nightmares and the way I make my fingers bleed when I’m bored.

Dad wants me to write and open a restaurant,

I think he knows the most though

he says the least and gets

drunk the most

and loves killin’ those

**** Zombies

or what-have-you.

I figure I’m just some sort of

****** up rich white kid

with too much time on her hands

to let herself feel happy,

because it’s far far easier

to just drift and sink in

something deeper and worse.

One time my teacher told us

to write a poem about anything

but not about our “boring teenage ****.”

This is the boring teenage **** poem I never got to write,

this is

boring teenage ****

but I’m sorry,

it’s all I’ve got on

a Tuesday

or actually it’s Friday and I’m not very good with

days or

even months and the numbers are getting even worse.

And it’s almost 2 AM so

this is what the fourth in a family writes when

there’s something stuck in her throat

that she can’t quite scream out.

Teacher,

here’s your

“boring teenage poem.”

Eat it.