As a child I always covered my ears
whenever I started to hear my
parents fighting about whose weekend it was
And I hated that term
Whose weekend it was
Like they owned me

As if I was nothing more than some
quarrelsome barter being habitually swapped between living quarters at the end of every week
Sometimes I wished nothing more than to be
invisable, camouflaged along the wall
of dusty old antiques
Because the only ones you ever saw
fighting over them were old people who smelled
of pastries and lilacs

But I got tired of waiting for that
And I got more tired of the *******
small talk and forced awkward smiles
and when push came to shove,
At eight years old I was tired
of being handled with kid gloves

I grew up feeling like a token of fair trade
And in school I learned that fair trade
really wasn't fair at all
Some were taught to run while others
are forced to crawl to cross the finish line
but even that can't buy you time

Because at the end of the day
I still find myself coming back to that
original thought of the antiques along the
wall of items that nobody bought
And when you see that your only
company is dust and stale air,
life finds another way to remind you
that nothing is fair.