Clayton
How I know you
Paternal parenting
DNA infused
Carbon contribution, to my physique
Father

In everything
My skin, eyes toes,
Unfortunately; inside my mouth
Spitting plaster-walled
Copy-paste personality
The same

Intimately
Close-dangerously
Different
Me a bold-faced fraction of ill abated love
Something that didn't work out
Photocopy
Blond-blasphemy of useless flesh
Reminder of her
Mom

Enough!
Teeter tottering
Tip-Toe tangling opinion
Excuses
Words fermented
Rotting-rigor

I know you.
Slit-eyed palefaced ****** of bigot ideas
Bearing pronged poker
Clicking glinting-clawed finger fondling fake religion
Suppressing supplement thought

*******
God's love the good life
Living a life to be proud of
Excuse me!
For not being as I am "supposed" to be

Eatting rancid lies
Your reality relative
To kiss-*** preferred siblings
Who like the taste of ****
What you shovel

Hung on lipsucking harlot, hinged hip hung-over
Descending oppressidly upon willing wanton will of man
Letting cracked-cackled toothed
Field Gap-smile
Decide your next move

I know you
I see what you push into hidden corners
The bias, nasty film of your character
Under whitecollar shirttails
Citizen, Patriot
Americas American

I know you
Your oppression
Not new
As underhanded and seedy as it was
And still is

I know you
As much as I'd like not too.

I awoke to the realization that today was my nineteenth birthday
I laid there for a moment recalling how I felt when I awoke on my eighteenth birthday
Nothing felt out of place,
nothing in the air had been charged,
and nothing in the air begged me to inhale it more graciously, as if my ascent to real adulthood required more oxygen
As one does upon their birthday, I reflected upon the previous year
I ruminated on the places I'd seen-
lakes of the midwest, dark hallways with strangers I was supposed to know, funeral homes I wished didn't exist
The places I'd waited-
the concrete carpet with friends for our favorite band, the stoplight of a town 400 miles from home, and calmly on a bench to call off a relationship with a guy I had just met
The people with whom I'd shared my voice-
fellow feminists, 5 year olds with autism who just wanted a piggy back and a hand to steady them on the hiking path,
my dad, finally
The places I hid my voice-
my brother's fraternity, a breakup text dripping with humor
I dwelled for a brief second on the men and women I had exchanged my touch with,
and with whom I had woken up without
As I flipped on my stomach
I could feel my swollen brain, gorged with knowledge, begging me to do something with it
I looked at the polaroids I had hung above my bed
and comfortably remembered the unrequited love
I had come to halting terms with, but now rested with like cozy pillow under my stomach
I looked at the faces of  friends whom I would now consider long distant friends. I wasn't sure if things would settle with them in the same way they had for 3 sensational months of summer
I shuddered at the toxins I had so willingly placed in my body,
pills, alcohol, drugs, unnecessary self-criticisms
I considered my weight-
a number that had risen and fallen due to over-eatting on the weekends and the daily under-eatting to compensate for the liquid sugar from the night before
I saw pictures of my hair, a foot longer than it is now and considered all I had put it through
I thought about my brothers
I wondered what they were thinking about when they woke up one year older
I do not feel older, I do not feel wiser.
I feel fine.
I am nineteen and I feel fine.