There is a monster under my bed.
Hauting, screaming, hurting me.
It talks to me every night.
I believe it doesn't want me here.
It screams and cries, acts more like a child than me.
It smells of the bottles in the glass container.
It stumbles up the stairs.
It opens every window, let's the cold winter frost in and hopes it freezes time.
Instead, it freezes me.
I wait, behave, hope.
I stay silent so it doesn't notice I'm here.
Tomorrow it will wake me up.
Tomorrow it will attend a parent-teacher conference.
Tomorrow they will praise it.
"You did a good job raising her"
Tomorrow it will turn into my mother.
Tomorrow night, the monster returns.

In the kitchen of fate, where recipes align,
There's a daughter of misfortune, a tale so intertwined.
Her father, luck's favored, with fortune at his side,
But she's taken her mother's grace as her guide.

Her mother, a tempest in life's stormy sea,
Taught her strength in adversity, resilience to be.
Though luck eluded her, in her eyes, you'd find,
A sparkle of hope, a spirit unconfined.

In the cauldron of challenges, the daughter found her way,
With a pinch of her mother's spirit, she'd never sway.
She stirred in compassion, a generous measure,
Adding empathy and kindness, her greatest treasure.

From her father, she borrowed a dash of good fortune,
But she knew in her heart, it wouldn't be her cartoon.
She'd blend it with care, mix it with her might,
For her mother's tenacity, she'd always fight.

In the oven of life, she baked her own path,
With ingredients gathered from love's aftermath.
A pinch of her father's luck, a dash of her mother's grace,
She crafted her essence, her unique embrace.

And as she emerged, a creation divine,
A daughter of misfortune, in her, stars brightly shine.
She carried her legacy, a blend so pure,
A recipe of resilience, forever endure.

Where there once was children catching frogs
in their hands, playing in the rivers dividing the sites,
or trying to convince the camp staff to give
them the branches they are attempting to clear,

There is now only her.

In the bright sun, doused in it’s heat,
her body shrivels in her wheelchair.
I step forward. She doesn’t move.
Her head falls forward. I scoop it up.
Hair lifting from the scalp, slipping away
between the webbing of my fingers.
I place a pillow behind her head and lay it back.

She snuggles into the blankets.

Pills fall into my palm; Red capsules, tiny whites,
chalky blues, and pinks with dust. Carving craters
into my lifelines. I place them on her bedside table.
She asks me to sort them. I throw them at the wall.
Two dozen stick, her mouth falls open, I scrape
them off and pour them in. Her teeth chew
and her tongue savors, I offer water. She sips,
it piles into the stomach. Bulging. I drain it
with a needle. It spills from the sky. The wind catches.

Tornado sirens blare across the grounds.

A scream cuts through my vocal cords.
I stand on the other side of the bridge.
Mud cakes the wheels of her chair. Her voice carries
before falling halfway across the slick surface.
A crack strikes the sky. The frogs beg me to go
inside. The wind cuts the skin. My vocal cords
rip and struggle against the storm. They fly
into the eye. The tips of my fingers catch before
they disappear. She smiles, her eyes slide closed.

A strike crumbles the bridge.

I think I’ll always be at least a little afraid of my own reflection.
It betrays me,
Stares at me with my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile.
Taunts me, teases me, tortures me,
Forces me to face all those faces that came before mine,
All the faces reminding me that I can’t change where I came from.

My eyes are supposed to be beautiful,
Big and green and thoughtful,
Intelligent, intoxicating, inexorable.
Though I’ve never found any beauty in my father’s eyes,
I find his relentless selfishness,
His arrogance,
His stubbornness,
His refusal to help others escape the pain I know he’s always carried,
Reflected in mine.
I stare at a mirror,
He stares back,
Reminding me that green is not just a color of beauty,
But also the color of the selfish isolation I am doomed to endure.

I don’t see beauty in my mother’s smile,
I hear all the hateful words that passed her lips,
All the words screamed at me until I finally began to believe them,
Encouraging me to make myself smaller,
Make myself less me.
I picture her hovering over me,
Her grip so tight on my wrists that I can feel the bruises forming,
Her face distorted by my tears as she hisses at me,
“Cruel,” “cold,” “undesirable,” “unlovable,” “unfixable.”
I imagine her soft smile,
The same smile she wore every time she swore she was proud of me,
The same smile everyone tells me I share with her,
Sweet and feminine and classically romantic,
Twisted into the spitting image of hate and disappointment she won’t let me forget.

I wish people wouldn’t search so hard for my beauty.
I wish they wouldn’t take my face,
My features all stolen,
As a representation of my being.
The big, green, eyes,
The charming, uneven, smile,
Long thick hair and tiny, little, freckles,
Femininity, romance, perfectly imperfect to keep you interested,
Just unique enough to make you think you’d never find a replacement.
It’s all so pretty, so perfect, so pointless.
It may captivate you,
But it doesn’t tell the story of what lies beneath,
All you’d have to endure to keep it in your life.

It’s not easy to see beyond my face,
Or my attitude,
Or my wit,
All designed to intrigue.
It’s not easy to stare into my eyes and watch them fill with tears,
Watch the way my face falls,
Farther and farther from your perception of my beauty.
It’s not easy to hold slender hands when they tremble,
So violent you’d think there was an earthquake rattling around in my mind.
It’s not easy to trace the outline of my figure when I’ve become too thin,
The valleys between my ribs,
The sharp ridges of my hips are too scary.
I may be easy to look at,
So easy to admire,
But I am not easy to love.

I ache for the love of which I have been denied for so many years.
I want to be beautiful for all that I’ve endured,
All that I carry with me,
The pain I’ve felt,
The stories I’ve collected,
All the broken pieces of old versions of me that I’ve slaughtered on my own accord.
I want you to think that I am beautiful even though I can never accept it.
I want you to still think that I’m beautiful when my skin is ripped to shreds,
Torn by the blade in my own hands,
When my eyes are sad and empty,
When my smile eludes you.
I want you to still think that I can be beautiful.

I am so tired of bleeding my soul for people who just want to look at me,
So sick of letting people in who find everything beneath the surface of my face ugly.
I am so much bigger than my body,
So much more beautiful than my face,
But it will never matter.
People will always praise my father’s eyes and my mother’s smile,
The traits glued to me that bleed into my mind,
Infect my soul with all of their hatred and anger and disgust.
People may always call me beautiful, but just once, I want someone to find my beauty to be more than skin deep.

In a bedroom in small-town Pennsylvania,
you’ll find an unmade bed,
a pile of clothes on the floor—
clean but not folded,
open drawers and dusty shelves,
a desk in the corner of the room
with pictures laid across it.

When I caught my first fish at six.
I held it at arm’s length by the fishing line
to avoid the slimy scales,
a frown on my face from being forced
to sit silently in the cold.

When my family went to Marco Island,
my sister and I, sifting sand for the best seashells
in our matching swimsuits and hats.
Mom and dad’s fights forgotten in our fun.

High school graduation
posing with my best friend since first grade,
diplomas in one hand and an extra cap held between us
because not everyone survived all four years.

Move-in day at college,
sitting on my raised bed with a grey comforter
and two decorative pillows the color of cotton candy.
Sweat on my brow from southern humidity
and moving furniture without the help of a father.

The pictures are merely snapshots
that lack the full story.

How I learned what it meant for love to fall apart
when I was eight years old.
My sister warned me before it happened,
told me what a divorce was.
I mistook her for joking until they called us upstairs.
Dad cried when they told us, but mom held her tears
until the day he left. The sounds of her cries
escaping from behind a closed door.
“This doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
But that’s exactly what it meant.

How I was taught by my father that love is conditional,
and I repeatedly needed to prove myself
through good grades and unquestioning obedience.
Forced to stay home to spend time with the family,
sitting wordlessly on the couch while he watched TV.
Made guilty for wanting to spend time with friends
because that somehow meant that I was a bad daughter.
It’s funny—I never asked myself if he was a good father.

If you look harder at the bedroom,
you’ll find journals filled with bitter words,
screws from disassembled pencil sharpeners, loose razors, and Aquaphor,
food wrappers stuffed in hidden places,
a closet brimming with junk and pairs of shoes,
evidence of a story untold. Until you.

'I was beautiful once,'
    she said,
                  her weathered hands mending another torn patch on an old travelling cloak;

"It was good in its own way, I suppose,
    But it no longer had use for me.
...
I wore the beauty over my shoulders like
  A second skin,
          like a gifted jacket
                                 which I one day outgrew.
...
My interests turned to other purposes,
          And she was tucked away alongside the other tokens of my youth"

She stood, shaking out the quilt on her lap
     which flared in kaleidoscopic colour -
an intricate map
                     of tiny knots and stitches which had layered over years of constant mending,


"I make my own clothes now"







.