I was torn from my slumber
Like moss from a stump
By little kid fingers.

Forcibly ****** back into a reality
I did not want to live.

Because in that reality
My family becomes
Monsters.

And I become a slot machine.

i wish youd let me go
so id stop hurting you

i wish youd let me go
so you dont have to see me in pain

i wish youd let me go
so you could get better

i wish youd let me go
so i stop hurting us

i wish you stay
so we get better together

You said, "I love you still"
And the words are like boulders on my back,
Crushing me, like how I drowned our love
Because we were just momentary.

Waltzing with my hand intertwined with death
Has never been a greater fate,
You'll keep pulling that knife out of my chest,
But you'll always be too late.

The moment I started to think I'm incapable of being loved-
Was it when they took what they wanted, unprovoked?
Came too soon,
Was it when I was "a little bundle
of joy"?
Did I learn then, that I was just
a toy?
Was it then, when my father
walked away?
Was that my price to pay
for being born that day?
How could it it be, when I didn't do
anything wrong?
You left without a word,
left me here all along.
Did I learn it before I could even
speak?

Was it when, the man, old
enough to be my grandfather grabbed my hand?
Did my breath hitch, as he whispered those awful words?
I was barely eleven, it didn't make
any sense,
his breath on my skin, the feeling of his fingertips grasping for mine,
as he'd say with a smile, "Our fingers
are making love,"
Was it the first time?
Or just the first time I remembered?

Was it when the stranger
grabbed my *******?
Was it then I was infested?
Did I learn that hands could only take,
not to give?

Did it start all  too soon?

You and I were like a garden and a war,
we both fell in love, which left our hearts quite sore
prettiest flowers now covered in blood, the bright skies cloaked with gloom
I'm afraid my little flowers would never bloom.

old friend
my blade
once again
like before

Another bottle down,
Hoping it can distort truth
Maybe if the mirror’s fogged, it can’t reflect
Can’t show him the middle-aged wreck.

Another chug of warm swill,
Hops molded, no bubbles, flat
Looking at baby pictures and a bag of teeth
Mummy left them, he feels the pain in his jaw
Maybe with another swig, he’ll be rid of it all.

Father watches from his sick bed,
Colostomy bag overflowing,
The excrement covers the scent of shame
As eyes barely raise to see his progeny

No he’s clicking the button to call the morphine
Drips entering to send him to a new dream,
Unable to stand the sight of his kindred,
As the boy that became a man, indigent.

Bryan takes another swig of clotted wine
A Merlot collecting dust upon his desk,
The keyboard is crusted over, white film, flaky
As he tends to his perversions, hoping a spark can awaken

On here he can be anyone,
But his lungs fail to inflate fully
And the liver shrivels to a freeze-dried remnant,
It’s only been minutes, but he shakes
Begging with forgiveness
Needing something to wash down the pittance
One more swig’ll do her!
Another drink to soothe.

As father watches on,
Glazed eyes and singing Aussie songs
He’s ******* post the catheter bag
Flowing yellow rivers down his bedside

Dreams fill his head,
Hoping Bryan dies,
So he could mend and heal,
Watching as he sips forever,
With jaundiced, glassed-over eyes.

If he could write it,
Or murmur sound
He’d say he was disappointed
But all he does is frown

While Bryan,
Consumed with trauma
Caught in his self-made prisons
Drowns in a sea of sick
And cheap bourbon.

Forever a child in a man’s husk
Daddy’s little burden.