homeless
i raised myself to be someone who has no roots at all. i did it to myself by never staying put, always jumping from place to place instead of embracing one home. i have no home at all. i am always wandering, always temporary, never knowing how long each stay will last. and i cannot grow as quickly as others when i am pruned. others who have steady sunlight and familiar soil. they have real friends, and a permanent family, and the coffee shop down the street that is always there. i have train tickets, and parking tickets, and parents who take turns making me cry, and google maps to help me navigate short-term return address cities. instead of feeling free, as wandering implies, i feel so incredibly trappedâlocked out of a safe space that everyone else spent their adolescence building. mine was built on highways between broken homes. i look at the photos they share and wish someone had taught me how to swim with the tide. i began drifting before i knew what it meant.
repressed
if you are
like me
when you
were young
you were
taught that
tongues
should sleep
safely inside
filtered mouths
not dressed
in honesty
or pleasure
but rather
in delusion
in carefully
memorized
scripts
when
your bones
grow around
these limits
they break
a little
with every
breath
they form
in twisted
patterns
through
knotted
childhoods
into
corrupt
adulthoods
where
we must learn
what it
means to
unravel it all
i am tired
my blood feels thin
within my veins
iâve never been inside a home
that smells like freshly baked muffins
and acceptance and truth
my walls have always
been made up of bone and grit
the paint peeling from
overhearing so many lies
iâm not sure the voices even notice
the tone of carelessness
that lines their mouths
or that i have spent years trying
to unlearn their brokenness
the toxins that leave
a waxy film over
everything
i am
subjective
i do not feel compassion
for the man who made me
learn what it means to survive
to come out the other side
with wounds that hide under
repressed skin, only to reveal themselves
as silence or black ice caught in
a flash of remembering
i do not wonder what made him this way
think, did his mother hug him enough
when i hear his voice echoing
in nightmares where i cannot scream
and my legs feel like lead
burdened by the weight of all this baggage
a torn-up suitcase
filled with bloodred bricksâ
it does not meet the carry-on weight limit
and i cannot unpack it
where do i go from here
there are ladybugs crawling all over my motherâs house
or mayb...