Sam Miller

Sam Miller Jul 2013

Two in the morning,
Reality calls for me,
to come back to her.

Her arms wrap me up,
A blanket of bold, harsh truths,
Slowly suffocate.

No no let me go,
Don’t take me back there again,
I wanna stay here.

Bright light of the screen,
I cling to virtual comfort,
and avoid the world.

Keeping my heart safe,
from the pain drilled into it,
when I turn away.

I don’t know real life.
I only know what I see.
I see ugliness.

Sam Miller Jul 2013

Candyland

I walk down sugar-coated streets,
stumbling over rumor weeds poking up through the cracks
and fearing the whispers that I think I hear.

I watch the candy people walking around,
******* each other dry one way or another
like leeches with sweet teeth.

They make sour faces,
like ******* lime soda through a Sour Punch Straw,
but they keep *******, because there’s nothing else to do in Candyland.

I have to look really hard to find the sweet people.
The gummy ones, the melt in your mouth chocolate ones.
Sometimes I find them half-eaten and discarded like office lollipops
and sometimes they’re melting under everyone’s Red Hot gaze.

Sometimes I only find wrappers
and I get so angry that I think I might melt myself.
Because these people have been eaten.

******, nibbled, gulped down
like nothing more than a quick Kiss that means nothing.
But no matter how small they were, they still mattered.

They mattered to someone,
but now they’re just slick remnants on cellophane or foil.
And what hurts even more is that I couldn’t save them.

I’m not Princess Bubblegum,
I can’t protect a candy kingdom.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.

Sam Miller Jun 2013

Look at Me

A mirror is only as good as what you see on its surface
and when what you see isn’t what you want,
you start to wish the mirror was broken,
that someone bought it from a fun house,
that what you see isn’t really you.

You start to avoid the mirrors in your house,
pretending not to worry about how you look,
claiming that you’re not a vain person.
But the truth is, your vanity hides
beneath a layer of disgust
like a sheath of decaying sanity.

You want to curl up,
curl up until you disappear,
because maybe then people would look at you
the way you want them to,
they would look at you fondly,
missing your little quirks and they would say things like,
“They were so beautiful, it’s such a shame.”

But the thing is,
that’s not what happens.
That is not fondness,
it is pity. They feel bad for you,
but they feel no guilt
for how they ignored you.

Disappearing won’t make people look at you.
I thought like that once upon a time,
and sometimes the thoughts still creep in
like little worms trying to eat away at the confidence I have built.

But **** it,
I have worked too hard to go back now.
When I look in the mirror,
I no longer see that layer of disgust
that sheathed my decaying sanity.
Now I look in the mirror and I think,
“****, I look really good.”

I do it anytime I look in the mirror,
because now it’s true.
I believe every word of it,
I finally like what I see.
And if that makes me vain
then I will gladly accept the title.

I have wasted too much time avoiding my own reflection.
For once in my life, I’m finally happy with what I see.
And nobody, nobody, is ever going to take that away from me.

Look at yourself.
Embrace what you see, love it.
If you don’t like it, you can change it.
You can change the cut and color of your hair,
you can change the clothes you put on,
you can exercise and you can eat right,
you can even change the color of your eyes.
All I ask of you is that you don’t hurt yourself in order to change things.

Sam Miller Jun 2013

Little Sister

Darling sister,
with your hair the purest shade of carrot
falling to the middle of your back,
and eyes the clearest blue,
and freckles splattered across your nose and cheeks
like the angels couldn’t stop blessing you once they started.
You look far too much like a ghost of my past.

Your sparkling curiosity,
your tendency to stay up far too late
because you just can’t put your book down,
not yet, because it’s just getting good
and you want to know what’s next.
The innocence of your smile
and the heartiness of your laugh.
You look far too much like a ghost of my past.

Forgive me, but you are scarier
than any monster in the shows I watch.
Because when I think about how you crave my approval,
how you cling to my company
like it’s the last time you’ll ever see me again,
and how you say, “Will I be like you when I grow up?
We’re just like twins! We’re sisters forever!”
It feels me with liquid fear,
like silver nitrate is being pumped through my veins.

You haven’t seen the darker side of me.
Not all of it, not the breaking down of my very psyche
as the world prepares to squeeze the live out of me
the way we squeeze Jell-O through our teeth
because we think it’s fun.
No, you don’t see the times where I don’t want to face the world.
Instead you see this quirky older sister that you probably always wanted,
I know I did.

I want to be that older sister, the one that you look up to,
the one that takes you places and teaches you things and
helps you understand how to survive in this world.
But I’m scared that I can’t.
I’m scared that one day I’m going to fall,
like Sherlock off of St. Bart’s.
But unlike Sherlock,
I don’t think I’ll be getting back up again.

I don’t want you to see me fall.
I want to be The Boy Who Lived for you,
and **** it if I’m not going to try.
Sure, I’m terrified of all this role model stuff,
it’s not easy, not by a long shot.
But you need me and I’m going to do the best I can.

Love,
Your Big Sister 4Ever

Sam Miller May 2013

Light it Up

If I have a short fuse
then you are a lighter,
setting me off
and watching me sizzle and spark
while you flicker out as if nothing happened.
Staring at me with your butane smile as I blow up,
and I can only infect everything around me with my flames.
It’s hardly fair, when you’re the one that started it,
that I get blamed when the village is on fire and I’m shaking in the center,
wishing someone would throw a bucket of water on me.
Yes I may be the monster here
but I am your creation,
a product of your antagonizing heat that hides
the fiery Frankenstein that you really are.

Sam Miller May 2013

Heart

A curious thing,
this mass of muscle and arteries.

Pumping blood around
Holding feelings tight in its grasp

I am angry.
It beats painfully, hard, fast.

I am happy.
It sings and it dances.

I am in love,
and oh how I feel it squeeze and leave me breathless.
That one’s my favorite I think.
Beautiful, beautiful breathlessness.

I am sad.
It weighs like an iron anchor sitting in my chest.

I have been rejected.
That squeezing becomes far too tight,
and suddenly, there’s nothing
but a hole.

The beating becomes slow, labored,
Breathing is suddenly painful.

The edges of the hole ache and burn.
Shredded and torn is the soul it protected.

I gasp for air.
Christ this hurts.

This mass of muscle and arteries.
It lies to you.

Tells you to feel.
Tells you to care.

Despite the pain,
despite the agony and the broken feeling,
you continue to listen.
And you die inside.

This curious thing…
It’s a monster.

Sam Miller May 2013

Rushing in the Rain

I fall asleep to a thunderstorm’s lullaby.
It caresses me with rumbles that seem to shake my windows,
drowning me in the constant beating of raindrops.

Before rushing to my bed,
I rushed from my car to escape the drops
that threatened to drench me.

Before rushing from my car,
I rushed to it,
to escape the drops that drenched me anyways.

Rain dripped like tears from my hair,
as I crawled my way home,
to the safety of my bed.

Shaking the rain from the fuzz on my neck,
part of me wishes that I hadn’t rushed,
that I had let the rain drown me in its falls.

I want to lose control
almost as much as I want to keep it.