I wake my sleeping son
Comes another day
Keep him, keep him close
So many fears, such desperate hope

                        Slowly.

You are my tangerine,
Brimming bitter-sour
Across the wretched, dusty room.

And you brought me
An orange touch of sun
Glitter glowing on my skin.

To wake wide in the morning,
Curtain dances with fresh air
Into my smoker's lungs.

Even to my deathbed remains
The scene of you that will
Leave me between the walls

Of longing and regret.
And to my morning sunlight,
I will never become better.

I say to you, my tangerine,
You are my very will to live,
And to die, if I cannot save you.

I thought we would be done by now.

But I keep finding more of you
between the lines
and more of me
between the letters.

Sometimes I think of killing myself
How the end would be so nice
How the darkness would swallow me up
And how the numbness would suffice
My need

For all the voices of the feelings
That constantly keep me reeling
To softly slow to a hush
As my brain starts tur-tur-turning into mush

How wonderful it would be
To have that powerful silence
Not even grasshoppers would bother
To wake me

My cells would stop dividing
My brain would stop the lying
Myself would stop denying
What I truly want

But but but
This is just a reckless fantasy
A way to elude one’s own reality

Because as I sit here on the floor
Tears drip drip dropping
I realize there’s those who care for me more
Cherish me more
Love me more
Than I love my own self

The crickets chirp
I put the pills down

Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t just been the backseat of your car,
Intoxicated. My first drunk hook up. My first. Period.
I picture myself being champagne on Valentine’s Day.
I picture myself being you, nervous in the car, holding Starbucks
because you know I love coffee. Sometimes, I picture myself as her,
calling you a stalker and ignoring your calls,
but then I see myself. I call you beautiful,
turn you into poetry, laugh at your bad jokes,
I see myself as I become your drunk Wednesday night
when you’re sad. I see myself as I say no,
I become a “this is not a good idea”
and you a “we’ll deal with the consequences in the morning.”
We laugh because this hurts too much.
You take her out for dinner and I burrow money
for Plan B because you forgot you don’t like condoms
and clearly have no idea how children are made.
I have already named him. He has your curls and
my anxiety. He is smart. Except, I never wanted kids and
you would be a great father. Instead, you tell her
the beach reminds you of her and I cry in a McDonald’s
bathroom with my friend as relief floods through me that
the test comes negative. I stop talking to you,
move forward, meet someone new and before long
see myself becoming you. Because isn’t that the cycle?
Bad men turn good women into bad women who turn
good men into bad men. I’ll set him free so he can hurt
someone like me, and I drink red wine as I read her
poems about him and me.

My father walked me down the aisle,
But my mother held my arm.
He went with me,
But we went not towards the altar,
But towards the door.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And the ***** rang through the church,
Humming through the elaborate crown molding,
Carved by my ancestors.

He went,
Not beside me,
But before me,
And I watched,
As he was illuminated by the bright,
Overbearing,
Texas sun.

My father walked me down the aisle,
But I did not wear white.
My father walked me in silence,
And I shed tears not for a man standing at the altar,
But for the one I would never see again.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And no veil obscured my face.
All eyes were upon me, but not for my pristine beauty,
Instead for my clenched jaw and furrowed brow,
Severe and fierce to distract from my glassy eyes.

My father did not leave me at the end of our walk to sit beside my mother.
She clung to me for support and sobbed breathlessly,
Loudly,
Unavoidably,
And I carried her with one hand,
My sister the other,
And walked towards my future.
A future family,
Not one person more,
But one person less.
I walked,
One final time,
With him.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And I will never forget it.
Hundreds of eyes isolating my family from the crowd,
Slow and muffled sounds drowning in the deafening beat of my heart,
Blurred faces staring,
Black heels clacking against the cobbled path from the church,
The anguished wails of my mother,
The whimpering of my sister,
And the wooden box that glided before us,
Pulling,
A string tied to our patriarch,
The pin key of our family,
Pulled taut and then snipped with the slam of the hearse doors.

My father walked me down the aisle,
Before I had a chance to grow up.
He walked me,
Out of the church,
Away from the altar,
Never to be walked again.