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Daisy Sep 2018
You were a foreign concept,
Before I crossed your threshold my passport was stamped with
The loneliness that only accompanies temporary rooms.

I was a small,
And distrusting girl who had never felt solid ground beneath her.
The Earth’s platelets separating me further from normality
At the beginning of each month.

Black trash bags of my belongings littered the grass of every previous rest stop,  
And I thought you would be just like the others.
It was only a matter of time.

You learn not to get comfortable,
Not to unpack the baggage that you grew up developing,
And who knew somebody so young could have so much ******* baggage.

We walked the streets with it dangling from our shoulders,
I was little, and felt like Santa.
Only I didn’t much like that man, he always seemed to leave us out.
Mommy taught us that most men are like that.
They promise all sorts of things,
And then wonder why you’re upset when your hands are empty.

What mommy didn’t teach us,
Is that it wasn’t anybody’s fault but hers.
She didn’t explain that most mothers don’t disappear for days.
Or that they don’t lock themselves in rooms with torches
And men who can’t look me in the face.

She didn’t prepare me for the days that I would have you.

You.
You saw more of my growth than she ever did,
Within your walls I first able to be a kid.

At ten I painted almost every piece of furniture in my room
without my dad knowing,
And it didn’t feel like enough until I scribbled my name into the wall beside my bed.


Marking my territory like
“I WAS HERE”
“I AM HERE”
“Do you see me?”
“Is this real?”
“If I chain pieces of myself to every corner, they can’t make me leave, right?”

When I was twelve,
I invited my best friend over for the first time.
I had never had a place to hold sleepovers,
unless the vacancy in the shelter was gone,
And a stranger shared our room with us.

But you made me feel ordinary,
Like I had a place in the world,
And wow is that a big feeling for a little girl.

And then came fourteen,
The world seemed to crash around me,
And like every fourteen year old girl
I thought I knew love.

But when that older boy turned out to be meaner than the streets,
You let me cry,
Barricaded behind your doors,
I felt safe.

I screamed so loud I could feel you shake,
The window panes glistening with rain,
I think you cried with me.

Sixteen,
And it was time to leave.
Our little family worked so hard for the opportunity to advance,
“Don’t worry kids, we’re going to a forever home, one that we can own”

I said **** that,
Sat on the floor until the last box left.
I never allowed myself to be planted somewhere,
But you stole the roots from my feet and tied them to your foundation.


Your walls had been drenched in my sorrows,
And in my joys.
I never would have guessed I’d meet you,
And I never realized how much I really needed you.

I’m eighteen now,
In college,
And still think about you some days.

I never got to thank you for your support that became my back bone.
It’s crazy how well you can pay attention in school when you actually have a home.

I’m here now,
And you’re there,
But you have to know
that I carry you with me everywhere.
Daisy Jul 2018
He was once so adamant.
So ready to deny the duty of somebody else’s war.
But something must have changed
Once the camouflaged man was through the threshold,
Because when he left the young man was no longer a boy.

I always pictured him as a frat type guy.
The one that ended every night with a different girl,
But always called his mom.
He wasn’t sure what he was doing after graduation,
But he promised me
Weekend trips,
And car rides,
And ice cream.

He spoke to me slowly when he told me.
Counted the benefits on each hand and was sure to highlight the safety.
He says,
“I just know you worry,
But there’s no danger where they want me”
His words dangle between us
And I swallow my heart.
I should be proud,
Or happy,
Or feeling something other than this pit of dread in my stomach.

He enlisted,
And soon after began drinking.
His breath now smelled of cigarette smoke,
And he was “man”.
But every time I tried to meet the boy in his eyes
He would pull away.
We haven’t spoken in months.
Until one night he calls me.

He spoke to me slowly when he told me.
His mother was sick again,
Only days before deployment.
He’s been chain smoking
And can’t sleep.

I hear the words in the back of his throat.
Wanting to escape,
But refusing to admit
That maybe he just isn’t ready to leave.
But the days pass fast now,
And it’s only a matter of time.

I don’t know when we will speak again,
So instead I have late night conversations
With the moon,
About the boy who signed his life away
Too soon.
Daisy Jul 2018
She must have been *****.
Must have made you dizzy
in all the best ways.

Her tongue was sharp down your throat,
But you just couldn’t stop taking gulps
of her air.

As she passes your lips,
you are filled with warmth
of another world.

Of a world where everything is numb,
except her.

But don’t you see,
it’s all a part of the appeal.
She will hide things from you.
She will convince you to say yes
to her every word,
just for another sip

Every time you step away
her bottle shaped hips sway to you,
beckoning you.

Just one more drink from the rim of her mouth
has you begging for more.

She will leave you the next morning,
questioning all your decisions.
You will curse her name
with your head hung.
You will tell yourself,
you can not do this again.

Come night,
her aroma will threaten your senses.
And she is back in your arms.
Invading your veins.

You know she is bad for you.

What you don’t know,
is that I am a different kind of moonshine,
that will get you a different kind of drunk.

I do not smell like regret,
nor leave you in pain.

I will light up your darkest hours,
show you everything you missed
while she was in your mouth.

You will never have to feel guilty after a night with me.
You will be gazing upon the stars,
and not the sloppy ones
she convinced you to paint into your skin.

You do not have the option of drawing blood on the glass of my body,
I am more substantial than that.

Maybe you like getting drunk,
but my love,
if you ever decide better for yourself,
you’re going to wish you did it
while my light was calling to you.

It’s too late now.

Your head hurts
and you have nowhere else to turn.
One day you will see your error,
but until then,
have fun letting her destroy you.
Daisy Jul 2018
Her eyes blaze with guilt,
and an outrage at being guilty.
Being caught.

I patiently wait for the crows,
who so lovingly printed their feet
on the sides of my mother’s eyes,
to swarm me.
Swallow me whole.

Even when I’m right,
I’m wrong.
But that’s just how it is with drug addicts.

I want to hate her.
I want to deny the human that is littered
across her hands and grey hairs.
I want to erase her from my DNA
and ignore her as she has done to me.

I want to personally lay the burden
of my addictions on to her shoulders,
tell her, ‘you did this to me’,
watch her knees buckle, and then
have the audacity to ask
why she has kneeled.

But I could never hurt her in that way,
so instead I choose to look her in her face,
and ask why she can so easily do this evil
to me.

As a child I would sleep
with my head on her back,
hoping that one day
I could piece her back together.
Love her enough to make her want to change.
I tried to hold her down
like the weight at the end of a balloon,
and yet she always managed to drift.

To this day she calls me ‘baby’.
Speaks in a play voice that tells me she knows she was absent
When I was small enough to look up to her.

She never would mean to hurt me,
But she fails to see the chain reaction.
By bringing drugs and a child into her life,
She made those two companions.

And in that garden,
I searched for love under every rock that I could find.
Dug through the dirt just to blow kisses at worms.
Soiled my hands,
Searching for stability.
For something.
Anything to hold on to no matter how small.

And everything was always so small.

— The End —