Memories hang like shadows in the bed we shared
one Tuesday night when we both seemed to care.
I'm not in the mood to hear your voice
because each day is a reminder I made my choice
when someone utters your name or asks me why
And I muster half a smile, force a giggle
And shrug without reply.
You're easy to love because your words seem to rhyme
and match perfectly with the pattern of mine
I'm indecisive and don't play fair but
I threw rocks at the ocean today
and wished you were there.

the doctors are silly
they're naive, and believe everything you tell them -
have you noticed?

I said I was sick
and had a fever
and he asked me to stick my tongue out
(see, he'd already believed me)
and he put some wood, and then some glass on my tongue
and he said, "say:'AAAAH'"
(we obviously got a doctor here
who's confused - hey, are you a doctor
or are you a Year 1 English Teacher teaching vowels?)

and then  he looked at these strange instruments
most sagaciously (just to keep up the pretence;
just to impress me, you know)
and declared most solemnly:
"You are sick.
You have a fever."
(Hey - hello! That's what I told you!
tell me something new!)

but the amazing thing is
this doctor convinced me I was actually sick
such was the power of his words
(see, you know those miracle workers?
they get you well with their words
but doctors - they get you sick with their rhetoric -
oh man, doctors really make me sick!)

And I felt sick too...I had come in just to humour my doctor
but now he'd convinced me I was really sick;
he takes my lie and then convinces me of my own lie
- boy, those doctors, you must admit
they might make you sick
but they really got the medicine man's trick!

Still, my doctor’s a sucker,
cos, let’s not forget, it’s I who told him I was sick -
he's naive, and believes everything I tell him

Doors slam like Satan himself is
in a fit of rage below us, even if he is
in the deepest level of Hell, I feel the floor
shaking like a 6.0 has just swept us but it
is only a consequence of wood slamming
against wood and fists fighting doorknobs.

Voices rise like the temperature in Arizona
in the summer, abruptly, hot and heavy, so
quickly stifling any chance of relief—
anger is an emotion I am far too familiar with.

Some people live quiet family lives, are never
interrupted in their sleep by screams from a
father who dreams of death and a mother who
carries a scythe of shame as if she is the Reaper,
some people wake up in the morning knowing
there is breakfast waiting on the table, fresh eggs
hot off the stove and orange juice with pulp, but
others wake up and make coffee for themselves,
knowing parents sleep past noon and
we are the ones who are doomed to repeat the
history of abuse and psychological suffering but:
we are the ones who will help to stifle the shouts,
to put a stop to slamming doors and shrill screams,
dysfunctional daily routines and waiting for hope
that never arrives, we have had lives consisting
of always having to act stronger than we feel
when the floorboards seem to be breaking just
beneath the force of our feet, because our
bodies are not just our bodies, we are carrying
burdens that weigh more than our bones and
blood cells combined, so when we step on the
scale the number we're reading is really how
much hurt we have been holding, not how
much food we've been hoarding inside of us.

We are the children of complex family situations,
we are spend-more-time-in-psychologist-offices-than
we-do-in-our-own-roo­ms, we are no-parent-to-tuck
us-in-at-night-read-yourself-a-story-it-builds-­ability.
We are daydreams of escaping like Rapunzel,
we are how do I save myself from a nightmare when
I am already awake? We are years of reading self-help
books in Barnes and Noble until we finally understood
that the only thing to do is to help the world help us:
we are strong. And we understand that family exists,
but for us it is different. We are the children who find
comfort in books and coffee and anything outside
of a house so filled with tension and hatred, and we
have been waiting to fix ourselves for too long.