I don’t come home some nights
And my brother tells me when I don’t
As if I didn’t know that I did that
He asks me why

I always answer
Just stayed with a friend

But he knows what drinking all night looks like
I remind him of his mother

Weekend mornings
When he’s still home
I walk in smelling like suicide

He talks for hours
Nonstop
His hands hold things I can’t see
“This is how I am going to squeeze the toothpaste from now on
Are you mad at me from doing it wrong?
Hey I wish I was strong like you
It’s hard to help dad when you’re not here
I need you to buy name stickers for the Christmas presents
This is your shirt but dad doesn’t have enough money for laundry
I made too many sandwiches today
I ate them all
My best friend Louise farts a lot
It’s funny when he farts
Do you have to work today?
I know how it feels
Work is so ******* hard”

Sometimes I feel so unprepared
Feels like a ricochet for wrists
Axes chopping bricks
But yesterday
I fist fought a mountain
Some of us get practice

I tell him to relax
To bug his sister

“I love you,” he says
“When you become a writer can I draw pictures for your books?
I wake up some nights and hear you type
Mom used to stay up all night too
I don’t ever want her to come home
Are you going to move out soon?
Before or after Christmas?
Before or after my birthday?
Will you still get me presents?”

He is a one man search party
And has found most of the answers

In the end
The answer is always
Yes
The answer is always
I love you too

'Brussels sprouts'...
The only healthy addition on a plate of Christmas dinner,
because even the carrots are tempered in butter,
but I never serve myself any,
'cause I couldn't give a **** about being healthy.
At one point I was eating roast potato with mashed potato
and everything else was covered in gravy, so...
I'm a very bad girl who avoid what's good.
I stay up real late and snack on junk food.
On night outs I drink to get drunk,
mixing all the spirits to heighten my *****.
Liver abused,
dressed to ******,
dancing like a stripper on the Vegas strip,
grinding, shaking, dropping, moving, all hard to resist.
Then there's the social smoking, and a few smoked alone.
Hush, about the latter. No one needs to know.
All the Friday nights, the strange men, in my bed.
What am I looking for? 'Cause it's sure as hell ain't ***.
Boycotting church for the past few weeks,
but my mom doesn't know so don't let it leak
that I'm a bad girl, that I've changed, that I'm lost,
that in trying to find myself, the soul was the ultimate cost.
That naive, innocent girl who ran into the world with open arms,
appears to have misplaced that certain charm.
She stares back through the mirror eyes clouded with pain,
because each time I tried to stand up society struck again.
So, I'm a very bad girl. Really very bad.
I spend my time wrestling guilt, and it drives me mad.

Did I mention how much I love you?
When you saved me from my daemons in a winter cold,
When the gods denied me redemption and hope...
Not just another glove to fit upon the hand
With complexity of a lie yet sure to shine
Before it all.

As a diamond in the ruff
A precious
Rain cloud for the dried up cracks
In dessert heat.
The sky always staring down at me.
Another shadow to the day sleeps...

Do I know the time of fate?
Can I foresee the future's song,
On a fiddlers thumb.
.
Let's hope not

Can you place a hand upon wha you want most?

Can you touch tangible dreams?
Does a beat begin to grow

In the pit of the soul?
Did you think?

In a half empty mind.

What stars shined with the sea
With hopeless pleas....

Crashhh
Crash

S
I
N
K

Into hidden hours....

Where a fire burned
D
E
E
P

Will knowledge know and keep?

What makes me hold this heat

Is you!