Arms flailing -
Who am I?
Diversity unwritten in passions of horrible
  miscommunication;
Who am I?
Colours drowning in a sea of darkness;
Who am I?
Upcoming adulthood stuck between life and love;
Who am I?
All I am is me, just ... me.

Nobody chooses a bottle willingly. A pill or a loaded gun, in the end it's all the same.

We're waiting, still, hiding. In our holiest of places:

The kitchen and the office. A quiet sideways-slide into the last available stall in a casino washroom. The seat is still warm.

Teachers don't tell kids that drugs are bad. They told us that we were the evil ones for deep-******* a bottle of ***** every Friday.

They didn't know what we had to go home to.

Cancer sounded better than living past 20, and that's the thing that they'll never comprehend:

There's always a reason underneath overdose.

The only time a drug is bad is when you can't afford it, and you're sitting alone in a fetal position crying in need for a chemical bliss that you've caressed over and over; a blanket covering memories. Feelings. Emotions.

The only time a drug is bad is when you're too **** poor to grab anything better than a box of Benadryl and a dimebag of shake.

The only time a drug is bad is when you're anything but rich an' white and pretty, because then you're not addicted, you're having fun with the price of 1,000 a week at an all-inclusive rehab resort.

Drugs don't discriminate, but people sure as Hell do.

There's always a reason underneath overdose.

There's always a reason underneath.

There's always a reason.

I change each year just a little,
Shedding the skin I grew to know.
That's part of growing up,
You reap what you sow.

I have freedom now,
But I miss the structure of the past.
Does that make me weak,
To want something to last?

Things look different to me, now,
The world shifting around me.
I recognize none of this,
And yet memories only make me bleed.

Is it wrong to miss the chaos?
Is it wrong to want to go back?
I grew up in fear,
I was always under attack,

I'm not sure how to exist without the chaos.
I don't know how to make it through.
I used to have dreams, plans,
But deep down I knew.

This was my fate all along.
To forget myself at last.
Everything has fallen apart;
Turned to shattered glass.

I fear these goodbyes
for when I return
time will have passed
and I don’t expect
You to wait

but how I wish
I didn’t have to wait
to come back

I must leave
and I know
You don’t understand
why
but I must

I am in
a season
of waiting

now let's convene a table
about the best mamma-mug and idle
steak knives from a wedding never better severed
in m'acrimonious divorce. let's

chit-chat about the diaper pail of
politics and the **** that children under 2 have a
disgusting habit of bringing
to the fetid stir
of middle-somethings—

let's this and that, and on, and oh! you first!
and I can't agree more! and should we
have another pour?—yes, yes, yes, let's
do!—and hey, I have something
prescient to say...

—but why start now?
another pour, another kid, another pail,
another fetid downpour of adulting—
to hell with revelations on the lam.