Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Free Churro


The party’s over
It’s been over for sixteen songs or so
And I’d like to show everyone the door
But the ones that meant shit -
they left a long time ago.
Thread by thread
Like a hand-knit sweater
Coming apart.
Sinking into a sea of solo cups
I wonder if they just mean something
cause they respected themselves enough to leave.

~


I remember when I was sixteen
My mom would leave home dramatically
She’d lock herself outside
and weep in the corridor, motionless.
What are you doing? I’d say
And she’d say
“I have nowhere else to go”

I spent a good deal of my life
Never wanting to be her
All this while she was burning into my brain
That people never truly leave
She was wrong
Or maybe I’m just mad they beat me on my way out

I’d watch her come back in after an hour
And she’d sink back into the couch
Pull at the little bit of yarn she had left
And start knitting again.

~

It’s funny how
you wake up one day and
It’s been 13 years already
But I’m not fighting to justify every second anymore
The resilience is quieter now
Bathed in apathy most times and
For some
I just really want to feel myself combust
Like stubbing a cigarette on the grass and watching it
Rage into a wildfire across California.

Burning a hole outwards
Always outwards.
Emptiness always begins within.

~


Three years ago
My mother handed me a scarf
The colors mostly faded except one end
Which was a bright sapphire blue.
“I couldn’t understand
How to construct a neck”
I’m just glad somewhere along the way
She learnt to construct a spine.
After all that thread
She saved up pennies for
Wasted

Ever so slightly
She grew up

~

I read a meme the other day
It said that growing up meant knowing
You’re toxic too.
And I,
I guess I don’t even know what self-awareness means anymore.
It feels like
I’m outside the window of my own life
Looking in
And nothing’s on TV.

You sit there on the couch you bought
In the house you built.
You still have nowhere else to go.

Head stripped to strings
Thread by thread
You wring your own neck.
And I just wish you had used it

To throw her a line instead.

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