writing – So It Goes

I am retracted wings
and loose emeralds.

I think about flying
when I think of him. I picture
big jet planes and carrier pigeons.
I don’t remember much from
my early years, years when
he still came home to us.
Us, the small group she formed.
Us against him.

I remember hand-painted stars
and that blue sketch, framed.
But I can’t apply dates or times
to the snippets of he and us.

I am stairwell talks
and stunted voices.

I hid, I feared sharing anything,
knowing and not knowing
that the burdens I carried for her
were not for me to hold or share.

I watched car lights through the window
and cried until my face was bright red.
I told a lie to him, a lie that held truth,
but still a lie, because I was sad and scared
and didn’t know the words.

I am shadows
and slanted light.

I feel seen and invisible with him.
I am so much like him,
perhaps more than he recognizes,
and it’s startling.

I always wanted to be like him,
but as I learn and grow,
I’m not sure if that’s true.
I want to be like me,
not rebelling because of her or
pleading because of him.

I am not a paperback writer
or an aquarium diver.

Yet, I yearn for something.
Did he settle? Will I?
Is there stability in love?

I know he tried. I know
there is more to the story than she shared,
and there is more than he gave.
I was young and he was quiet.
He did well, not ladening emotions
on me, as if a mule, and I thank him for it.

I am of collared shirts
and rental cars.

I loved those weekends,
the ones that became more
than a saturday night.

I loved staying at hotels
and eating sunday brunch at grandmum’s.
I miss the days of overnight bags
and hiking trails we knew by heart.

I am these memories
and there are so many more.

The scars on my knees
and words inscribed on my skin
tell you my story.

I’m stumbling as I retrace
these steps, not prepared
as I go to turn the corner,
unsure of what will appear.

So, I count to three, as he taught me,
and know that if anything bad was coming,
it would have gotten me already.

I am the product of love lost
and old fairy tales.

I can recall the stories,
the ones that still stain my heart,
for I believed the lies
as if they were truths,
and they were, at the time,
fibs to keep peace, to ease her pain.

I didn’t know true from false
as I listened too well,
sat in that old leather chair,
and measured the floors by the length
of my kid feet.

I am the aftermath of a hurricane
and the eye of the storm.

Nothing felt safe
as I tried to navigate the tricky
waters of childhood —
simultaneously being a kid
and her confidant.

I kept secrets, heavy,
heavy secrets for her
about him and him. I
learned fear and desperation
each time I sat quietly,
pretending to be oblivious.

I am the result of distressing years
and hundreds of blank pages.

I filled journal after journal
with words I barely knew
to try and make sense
of the four walls she built around me.

My thoughts swirled on the paper,
dark ink tattooing stark, blank pages
that held the potential for anything.

I am the fruit of their efforts
and the cultivation of roses.

Each prickle extruding from my skin,
sharp and abusive,
tried to protect me from the unknowns.

Every once in a while, I recall events
from back then, events I’d rather forget,
having dug so deep to bury them.
I remember her and him,
and her and him.

I remember being in the middle,
not knowing it wasn’t my fault,
because I had yet to develop
the mental capacity to understand.

I am more than them
and yet nothing without the past.

The bones of my hips
and lines of my palms
tell you my story.

They tell you of my path
from there to now,
how I’m chipped yet unbroken
— a teacup well-used.

Tag: writing

Not an autobiography (pt. 2)

Not an autobiography (pt. 1)