Pick up the bones
Littered on the ground like a necklace
You made when you were five
Out of sea shells and mermaid hair
Wishing that you had scales and that you could swim
Because little girls don’t play in sandboxes anymore
But in their mothers’ makeup
Pretending to get fake injections in their face
Popping Smarties that they wish were diet pills
While they wait for their ******* to come in
The ones like Barbie’s: disproportional to her body—
A twenty pound weight that forces you forwards
With puckered lips and wrinkled spine—
Setting them up for disappointment and therapy
That comes in exactly the same shade of pink as the doll house
That promises real answers and quick fixes
Which figurines can’t convincingly lie about
Because they are more real as a plastic piece of childhood
Than the science behind depression and the statistically-backed  
positives of fancy water with antioxidants.

Pick up the bones
While little boys play with firecrackers and rocks
Popping them at the feet of faceless passersby
Wondering if the snaps are anything like the guns
From COD instead of WWII
Hoping that the girl next door will grow up to be a ****
But more interested in her mom being a cougar
That cigarettes will stop being bad for them
Because Indiana Jones made them look so cool
And leather jackets will always be in style
So they grow bored with legos and G.I. Joe’s
Because there’s no ***, no violence in imagination—
Not real violence anyway.

So bend down and pick them up
The shattered remains of what was left of the pretend baby
You thought you wanted
What was left of you before you remembered to dye your hair
And to darken your eyes with black smudges
What was left of your brother before he joined the army
Before he fell inside a scotch bottle and drowned
In the amber liquid that reminded him of *****
Passed down from your father.
Clutch at what was left of your sister before she wasted away into
The shallow shell of what she thought was beautiful
To the point of emaciation
Because pointed elbows and sunken cheeks
Will get her the movies she thinks she wants
And that you know she won’t get because she’s
Become too fake, too plastic to play a’real-boy.’

Now put them in your pocket
Because the wind is blowing and you’re afraid they will fly away
Afraid you will too without them to weigh you down
To keep you here.

Tuck them up and wrap them in mermaid hair and sea shells
And wish that you could be the person who played in sandboxes
And only cried if she got shampoo in her eyes
The one who made necklaces instead of doctor’s appointments
And laughed at herself instead of being tired all the time.

You put them in your pocket
And pray that someday you’ll figure out how to put them back together
Stand them up like a statue
One that you can make wave or frown
But not smile because you can’t remember what theirs looked like
(And it wouldn’t be realistic anyway)
So that you can make-believe
they never fell apart in the first place and that you never fell apart with them.