My saving grace, preventing me from letting myself go,
Was the thought that I had a brilliant mind,
That I was a thinker.
I wonder if that thought was self-instilled.

Where a mattress saves my outline,
To greet you at my door
Is to forgo myself of 20 years.
Doors became paintings and my lamp became the sun,
When I was lonely in my bedroom.
The hardwood floors were not stained,
My feet were afraid they were trained to preposition slivers.
I was falling, not free but asleep,
Never quite to close my eyes,
For I had to listen.
I wasn't a grown up yet,
So I did my best to hide until I was hidden.
My head was ill, and
For the strangest, I still believe that.
Who knows why,
Well, I think I do,
Because at moments,
I had quite an evil home,
Even with Great Grammie’s spirit living in the walls.
If I could have,
I would have been ill every day if it justified
stillness
If being sick meant being free from the noises outside my door,
I would pleasantly hold my pillow tight to my ears
And smile at the comfort of silence.
On bedrest questions were asked,
Will fate be forgiving?
The tears were real, You were crying,
But its okay, because youll tell these stories someday,
And others will hurt with you… Right?
But the truth of destiny was unresponsive.
The truth of people was rarely inquisitive.
My experience settled ashamed,
To be tethered to nobody but I.
I was a toad in god’s palm of manifest,
Every word I could muster to ask him for forgiveness,
Was but a cute squeak.
I wish someone wouldn't open my door with anger.
I had hoped to see a smile in the doorway,
A friend sharing my prison,
While we giggle, hiding away from the warden of my burdens.
But that smile,
That laughter,
Never came.
I was to pretend,
Or accept
My arms were still too little to reach out.
Nobody knew what was happening.
My family sat as onlookers, unbothered by my torture
For I was voiceless.
They heard nobody
But the mom and dad who didn't want the world to know
It had all fallen apart,
That they had nothing,
That their love was nothing,
That they couldn't give these kids a fighting chance to desire something other than silent days and silent nights,
To focus on something that wasn't the blood curdling screams nor cries.
I was lonely at the time.
If i could talk to him now,
I would say,
You do not need to suffer alone.
Maybe I would have reached out,
I feel like a goldfish that wished to be pet,
Yet nobody will ever know.
So I bumped into the glass until I was broken.
I am hurt.
I don't remember most of my childhood.
I only remember the screaming.
Oh the fucking screaming.
Can I stop trying to be so poetic?
Can I stop trying to hold back my memories for the sake that others could believe I did them dirty in the context of memory?
Because I am hurt.
And I have built this pain into myself.
If most of my experience was painful,
Does that mean my personality is composed of the material called suffering?
Will I always be prone to write like this, even in my states of contentment?
I still wait for that smiling face in the doorway.
To tear myself away from my bed,
To stop pretending,
To walk on splintered floors,
To turn off the fucking lamp
And, just,
Stop hiding.
It's funny now.
The warden’s gone,
Yet
Every night I can hear the sound of the vacuum down the hall,
Calling me.
How often I would scream in my mind at the walls
Knowing the warden would summon me and a dishrag for the halls,
That I could never heal from the damage I sustained,
Because my time was too busy being spent defending myself from the following blow.
Now I'm free, but burdened with the history.
I have my own house.
I make my own rules.
I try to love in a way that is a way I don't recall.
The door opened a long time ago, I just thought I should let you know of the scars from the bedroom.

But I do remember,
Seeing this being, this demons face
A grin
He wasn't mad, wasn't sad,
Nor was he disappointed in my sitting, self obsolescence
Consumed by false truths in my adolescence,
he was familiar…
I recognized him.
a child,
He said he loved to tinker.
He leant forward and whispered,
Momma told me
I was a thinker