I couldn’t tell you when I started doing it
Or why.
As far as I know it’s always been a part of me
My parents were certain it was a phase.
That this, like my nonexistent terrible twos,
would come and go
and the people in supermarkets would stop staring.
I know now how odd it looks.
I don’t blame them.
Imagine a miniature me, burning a hole in the floor
pacing back and forth
Hands clenched around an action figure
Mumbling nonsense to no one in particular.
Perhaps, they’d assume, to the toy in my hands
that my eyes were strictly fixed to.
“Talking to myself”
They called it.
Like I was crazy.
“Quit talking to yourself!”
My step mother would slap the toy out of my hand.
“You’re a big boy now, stop it!”
Maybe I would have if she took time to talk to me without screaming
or if my father were home enough to see how much she hated me.
How she Isolated me from her children,
the very ones who grew up to hate her more then I ever would.
But to me, it wasn’t something strange or crazy at all.
It was – is – kind of like watching T.V.
only more interactive.
I would tell myself a story.
The action figure, or whatever, was like an actor – a template.
For anyone I wanted to create.
The world around me would melt into static,
and I’d play both audience and performer
Putting on shows full of fantasy and magic.
Adventure and romance.
Tragedy and madness.
My own private little theater of distractions.
The older I got,
the smaller my actor,
and more private my performances became
until my action figure became a pair of toenail clippers.
Small enough to be hidden in my pocket
If I had to descend into the real world without any given notice.
The way I acted,
when someone walked in on me
You’d assume I was doing something naughty
and maybe I was.
Maybe it was wrong to indulge in the imaginary,
to live for fiction
but I didn’t care.
It was the one world I didn’t have to share.
I eventually would,
But I liked that I didn’t have to.

When I started writing these crazy stories down on paper
English teachers took notice,
and saw in me,
an apprentice.
Someone who could live their long forgotten dreams of being…
I don’t know.
I don’t think they did either.
They taught me the mechanics,
Putting names to the concepts I had known and used for years
that’s how I came to writing and to poetry.
How I became what I always was,and never will be again:
A little kid, telling  a story,
with indifference to the audience,
or lack thereof.
For no other reason,then to escape everything
If only in the moments when no one is watching.
Every now and again,
I still like to slip away from the crowd,
pull out my toenail clippers from my right front pocket
and see what’s playing.
I know, I may look and sound crazy
talking to myself over here,
and maybe I am.
But at least it’s not a boring conversation

We are a generation
raised by children
raised by children.

Growing up *****.
Maybe that’s why,
we’ve been avoiding it for so long,
and passing down lessons
on how to fake it.

He was seventeen.
His mistakes were still somewhere down the road
he so relentlessly trudged through the heavy weather
after storming out of his father’s house,
eager for independence.
Unsure what that meant.

He is my father -
responsible for all that I knew for sure as stable.
Yet, our table was held up by coasters
and we had a few too many late nights
sitting on milk crates
around a kerosene heater.
Things were never steady enough
to worry about them falling apart.

No one is perfect.
Although, I thought he was,
and he wanted to be
he just didn’t know how.

No one does.

This is the man who signed me up
for an in school group therapy session
in second grade
because it would get me out of class for a half an hour -
good lookin' out, Pops.

I learned from him, that life is about those little things.
There was this rule in his car about not leaving
until a good song is done playing on the radio.
It doesn’t matter what you’re late for
the world can wait.

I also learned from watching him
that life will **** your spirit.
That debt will eat you alive
only if you let it.
If you wait long enough, it’ll go into collections
eventually they will stop calling
and that’s all you really want.

I learned that no matter how bad you have it.
You can always afford to show compassion.
I learned that people will walk all over you.
That doesn’t mean you should stop.

But compassion takes its toll.
Years of chronic depression skewed my view of him.
At fourteen years old I became comfortable with the idea
that I might one day walk in on my dad hanging from a ceiling fan.
My only reassurance
was when he told me
“I won’t **** myself…I’m afraid it would hurt too much.”

I learned that love fades and sometimes stops cold
but that doesn’t mean you should give up on it.
I learned that sometimes there’s a good reason
to suffer through a bad marriage.
But once that reason doesn’t hold true
it’s time to break away, for your own sanity -
even that means breaking a heart in the process.

Then my Mother came back into the picture
slashing through his Achilles’ heel.
Watching my father fall was not an easy thing to see
but this wasn’t just my Mother’s doing
this was years in the making.
This was a poorly built Janga tower.
This was just a matter of time.

My sister told me,
in a rare moment of bonding
on stormy night,
while stuck at a Denny’s,
that she thinks it started
when his best friend died
a whole lifetime ago.

She shared stories about her memories of him
She got to see him play
and laugh because he felt like laughing
and not just to forget he has reasons to cry.
I envy her for that.

To me this was the man he'd always been
but in these weakest moments,
I saw myself.
For the first time in my life,
I truly don't want to be like him.
It hurts to admit that.

A man once said
that once you realize your parents aren’t perfect
you become an adolescent,
when you forgive them, you become an adult,
and when you forgive yourself
you become wise.

I feel no need to forgive my father.
I accept that he is human
and that he didn’t teach me the things he didn’t know.
What I did learn from him are the important things:
the value of compassion,
the pain of regret,
the unconditional love of a parent,
and most importantly
that stability is an expensive illusion
and bad things happen
to those who take theirs for granted.

I can’t remember
exactly what we had been fighting about.
All I know is this was the moment I started to ask myself
why I had fallen in love with you,
or even if.

I think I was complaining about algorithms
and how I didn’t understand them
and how math must have been invented by sadists.
You looked over my shoulder
and laughed at me.
That’s college math? That’s so easy. You must be *******.
Ok, that’s not exactly what you said
but that’s what I heard.
So I shot back with an
If it’s so easy how come you’re not doing it?

An hour later,
after egos and knuckles were bruised
upon the basement walls
and things were said that were meant
but not to be heard aloud
and we both had time to calm down.
I came back down stairs
and heard you sobbing in our bathroom.
I opened the door to see you
naked and shamed -
razor blade in hand
and your left leg
leaked thick and red
hiding the pattern of
horizontal slices
what would become ugly set of scars.

I felt many things in that moment:
pity, anger, guilt, and confusion.
Mostly I was just asking myself
why I had fallen in love with someone so clearly wounded -
and I hated how repulsed
I was by you that night.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how selfish you were.
How you clearly overreacted -
and how there was no way I’d win this argument.

Under the mask of the comforting boyfriend,
I sat beside you in silence.
I held your hand.
There was an itch in my throat
from uncomfortable words.
I swallowed them
and kept rubbing your back,
Instead I lied:
I told you we would be fine
that this didn’t change everything

that I didn’t hate you now.

8 .
I hear bullets
in the thunder of the storm
and wake up, fist balled
clenching onto fabricated memories
the only things I have
aside from the haunting neighbor kids’ taunts
and the hearsay of my mother:
the murderer

10.
someone told me this once
- I forget who -
but they told me that
my father picked me up
the morning after the shooting
- although he didn’t know it then -
he carried me over the corpse
as I slept
it slept under the porch
freshly painted
- a thick red

12.
seat across from me is empty
the killer’s chair
I walked into this building like an ant
(so small)
Its tall gates like sharpened teeth
opening wide - consuming me
and my insignificance

a long line of hair tangled
and miserable looking
women in orange enter the room
like the life had all but melted from them
and all they had to look forward to
was mashed potato Tuesdays
and cross-stitching classes
I know her from across the room
I don’t hate her
as I think I should, or imagine I would
Instead, I am overcome by heavy understanding

I am soon to be face to face
with the vessel that brought me into this world
and I could ask it any question
yet all I can think to say is
“hi “
she smiles at me and tears up a little
tells me she’s glad I came
and we stumble over small talk
still in awe
I wonder how it was that I just knew

she asks about me
I don’t know who I am yet
is the truth she never hears

13
I’m told that the gunshots
haunting my childhood dreams
were never fired by her
I believe that
she doesn’t seem like the type

the story I hear these days
is that she did what she had to do
to keep us kids alive
I like that much better
my mother:
the heroine

15
their drug of choice, dad tells me
was *******
and I’ve also learned some interesting
but hopefully forgettable facts
about the night I was conceived

17
they let her off her leash
she came back home
tail wagging between her legs
Got back with my father, and took
(another?) half-hearted jab at motherhood
She didn’t know how
Or me
And I felt bad for her

21
I wish I could tell you
that this story has a happy ending
but life is the shattering of people
and sweeping together of what falls on the floor
nothing is ever completely swept away
and the microscopic slivers of the past always
find their way into our feet

my parents were never built to last
not calloused enough to walk
barefoot in the kitchen
dad still calls me nearly every day
even just to gossip or complain

She hasn’t called in months
but she only calls when she wants something
so, I guess that’s a relief
Still, its times like this
I wish I could hate her

I hate to admit it,
But I kind of miss the time in my life
when she was made of stories
and I never knew her from across the room
or learned what she is:
another shard on my kitchen floor

My eyes are pulsating
surrounded by redness
from the overuse of my tear ducts lately

Pain radiates throughout my chest
in perfect cadence with my breath
in go all my plans and dreams of living for living sake
and out comes the remains:
shards of a self that was not whole to begin with.

It sort of looks like a painting I saw once
on the wall at a café
where I frequently perform
or whatever it is that I do

Whatever this is
a living, it is not
as I am all too often reminded

“What do you do for a living, Josh?”
I breathe
in go all the things I hate about myself
out comes everything else

I feel as though I’ve poisoned myself
and I feel as though I deserve it
but this is not a cut-myself cry about my feelings -emo *****-poet
lying in this bed, crying to his father
because someone hurt his feelings
these are not proud words

I am not that pathetic
am I?

I feel like a water balloon
pricked with a pin
not at the bottom
bursting all over in a two second eruption
but at the top
trickling
ever so slowly

Out  go
in comes
another moment further  from breakdown
one more breath closer
to laughing at myself in the mirror
and telling myself I’ll be okay

“What do you do for a living?”
I breathe
“Very funny, Josh, but how do you make money?”
I don’t