there is nothing less comforting than the whiteness of a hospital
clinically and methodically assaulting your senses
which have already endured enough to last you a lifetime of pain;
for a place made to heal people, it is awfully lifeless
and cold

i was so cold
the whole time
and i don't know if that was anxiety or real
normal cold
but i was shaking
even when they gave me the scratchy, paper thin blanket
i was shivering

mom
i'm sorry we're even here;
if i'm sorry for what happened, or for telling her
it doesn't matter
because the awkward
and silent acknowledgment of how artificial our love is
is broken;
this is a discomfort that's far worse
because more than anything
this is discomfort

how do i tell you i lied
about every time i left the house
until i was lying about things that didn't matter
inconsequential details i still wanted to hide away from you?
because showing you any part of me felt uncomfortable
like exposing a healing wound to the cold air

a hospital waiting room
is probably the worst place to have this type of conversation
so instead i carry the weight, and sit stiffly next to you
and distract myself with nurses and women in wheelchairs

why are they here?
are their stories as tragically stupid as mine?
because it really is tragically stupid
a poem titled **** kit
should probably be about a girl who was *****

i don’t know if i was *****
i thought i was
then i thought i wasn’t
then it didn’t matter because i was speaking with a nurse
who told me we’d have to report this

i don’t even have any metaphors tucked away
waiting to be eloquently written
about how still the air was
i don’t remember a shift in noise;
all i remember was crying uncontrollably

what an effective way to wreck a girl’s life;
for a minute,
i thought this was karma for lying
surely i was lying
because this wasn’t happening to me

but it still didn’t matter
because i was now talking to a doctor
and my parents stood at the edge of a hospital bed
looking at me like i was contaminated

and when she took her leave
i wanted to beg her to stay,
because i didn’t want to be locked in a room,
feeling contaminated and disgusting,
with such an ugly reality choking the air
shoving itself so far down our throats
that every time i found the courage to speak through the knot in my throat
my dad would look down at me
like he hated me
i think he hated me

i hated myself a little, too,
because nothing would ever be comfortable again
and we would always be sitting on a ticking timebomb
waiting for it to blow up, any minute

when would we acknowledge this?
when would my parents realize
this was realer than any of us were comfortable with
and blow everything to smithereens?

this is what it feels like
to push a boulder down a hill;
because i’m reckless and stupid
i am not a coward
and i’m not scared of some guy who got drunk
and got me drunk
but i am, if anything, stupid

this isn’t a thought experiment;
i have to keep reminding myself,
because what i set in motion would **** people
my parents were just collateral damage
and i think my mom still beats herself up for not standing up to my dad
and he beats himself up for letting his own daughter get to a point
where she felt it was wise to lie to him and hook up with a guy in an abandoned house

but once the dust had settled, and they'd both recovered from the shock of realizing
i was no longer their daughter,
but an incredibly stupid person,
i had become collateral damage as well

there is probably nothing that can prepare you
for the feeling of your own dad calling you a *****
in so many languages,
and so many different words,
you’d think it would lose its’ punch
but it never does
and each time you take a blow
he yells louder
because, why are you crying?

why would you be crying,
when you did this?

i was a stranger to my own family
not because they think i was *****
but probably because they know i don’t think i was *****;
this hospital
has broken me more than anything that boy has done to me

because he is a stupid fifteen year old
who gave some girl he liked ***** because she begged him for it
but these are big, white walls
fully conscious of what they do to anyone roaming these halls
because my life isn’t now divide into
before he ***** me
and after

but before i stepped foot in that hospital
and after.